Vampire$

Chapter 22

Felix slept hard and woke up late.

He lay there a moment, staring at the ugly ceiling tiles that fit in just right with this ugly motel. Then he rolled his bare feet out onto the floor and sat up and thought: What if she won’t come with me?

After all, the girl had no family — save for that wandering Uncle Harley, was it? — and the Team had clearly become everything to her. She and Annabelle were tight, very tight. She loved Jack and she loved big Carl Joplin and Cat and…

Shit.

He went through his morning ritual and then he took a shower and then he sat naked and dripping on the edge of the bed and had a cigarette and thought: What have I got to offer her?

“Staying alive, for one thing!” he muttered out loud.

But it didn’t sound as fine as he would have liked.

So he stopped thinking about it. He stubbed out the cigarette and put on some clean clothes and gathered all his other stuff together and sat it on the little card table provided him.

Where his shoulder holster and gun were.

He looked at it a second, then abruptly reached down and dragged the Browning out of its holster and it slid — as had every decent goddamned gun he’d ever known — so easily, so smoothly, into his palm.

He knew, or at least had come to believe, that this feeling was very rare. That most people never felt this natural with a firearm. Some people hated them and some who didn’t couldn’t see them and most always felt just a little awkward and…

But not him. Not ever. The Browning felt just like…

Just like the end of his hand.

My Lord! he thought wearily, with at least some trace of wry humor, what if it’s all just as simple as that?

They were all being terribly cheerful when he got to the suite, but that was okay. Now that he had made the decision to go, nothing much bothered him anymore. He even liked it. Even liked them, sitting around that faded coffee table scarfing down take-out fried chicken, reeking of Team spirit and smartass remarks and just generally acting like the kind of people who got into this mess in the first place.

But… what the hell. They deserved a couple of grins. And Annabelle was there looking radiant as always. And she was there, dimpling and feeling safe. And, well, the chicken smelled good.

And then Father Adam’s mass, after the meal — that felt okay, too. Felix had never even seen a mass before these people and now… now it felt perfectly natural. Logical, maybe.

Felix’s good mood remained for another twenty minutes, until they started War Planning and Davette’s sketch of the basement in her Aunt Victoria’s house started to look too damn much like the Cleburne Jailhouse.

Seems vampire Ross had done quite a few renovations to keep sunlight and prying eyes away — looked like a bloody fort down there — and Davette hadn’t even seen it all.

“You’re going to have to blow it,” said Felix, standing over them as she drew. “Just like the jail.”

“Can’t,” replied Jack Crow calmly.

Felix stared at him. “What do you mean: ‘can’t’?”

Crow puffed on a cigarette and stared at him through the smoke.

“Blow up a mansion worth maybe four or five million dollars in the center of residential north Dallas? Shit, I’d have every Dallas police car, fire truck, and SWAT team and half the Texas Rangers on my ass in two minutes.”

Felix blinked. “Well, do what you always do — call ’em all up ahead of time. Have them there. Get authorization. I thought you knew people.”

“Not that many and not that well. They’d hang up on me if I told them I wanted to blow up a mansion in the middle of their city.”

“What did you do when you had one in a city before?”

“Never had one.”

“Huh?”

Crow grimaced, leaned back in his chair. “It’s true. We’ve never had one inside a city, a major city, before.”

Felix looked at the others.

“It’s true,” confirmed Cat.

Carl nodded. “Had ’em everywhere from upper New York State to Montana. But never inside a big city. Always in the country. Some little town. Or outside some little town, really.”

“They don’t like large cities,” offered Father Adam, the historian. “Or at least they never have until now.”

Felix hated this. “Never been organized before, either.”

“We don’t know how organized they are now,” objected Carl.

“They’re ‘organized’ enough to lay traps for you!” Felix sputtered. “How organized do they have to be?”

And it was quiet for a while while everyone thought about this.

“How ’bout,” offered Carl slyly, “if we just take out one wall?”

“Huh?” said Crow.

“I could even muffle the sound some. Here.”

And he leaned forward and pointed to one of the outer walls of Davette’s sketch. “It looks tough here. And it is, for a house. But you take out this one wall and all this structuring here, this support, these joists, will go. Hell, you could stand out in the garden and see the whole basement through sunlight…” And he turned and eyed the window. “If we get some sunlight.”

Felix followed his gaze to the window. The pane was covered in running sheets of rain. He hadn’t noticed it before. But it was really coming down.

“When you say ‘muffle,’” Crow asked slowly, “just how quiet do you mean?”

“Well, it ain’t gonna be what you’d call quiet, Jack. That can’t be done with explosives. I mean, people outside will look up when they hear it, but…” He turned to Davette. “The place has got a wall around it, right? Pretty high?”

“Nine feet high,” she told him.

“And lots of trees and stuff?”

She nodded. “You can’t see the house from the Street at all.”

Carl looked at Jack and Felix and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Looks to me,” offered Cat, with one arm around the deputy’s shoulder, “like we have a Plan.”

“So we do,” pronounced Jack. “We go in there, set up the detectors and, if we get the readings, we let Carl blow the wall and we go in and get ’em. Questions?”

No one had any.

“All set?”

There were several nods.

But Felix was still staring at Davette’s sketch.

“Felix,” Crow growled, “am I gonna have to ask if you’re in or out every damned hour?”

Felix looked at him, started to get angry…

But Jack was right. In or out. Decide, dammit!

“In,” he said.

“All the way?” Jack wanted to know.

“On this one,” Felix replied, tapping the sketch with a fingernail, “all the way.”

“Well, thank you,” Jack growled with heavy sarcasm.

“You’re welcome, Jack,” replied Felix calmly.

And for some damned reason that made everyone, Felix and Crow included, break up into laughter.

And then they kept laughing and kept laughing and they couldn’t stop and Felix, tears running down his eyes and wondering what in the world was so goddamned funny, turned and caught Davette’s eyes and her laughter was so pure and healthy and warm…

“I guess we have our moments,” murmured Annabelle a few seconds later.

And Felix looked at her and thought: I guess you do.

An hour later they were on the road to Dallas, backed up in heavy interstate traffic snarled by a Texas thunderstorm leaning in from the north.

Chapter 23

The motorhome and Blazer were parked side by side at the cul-de-sac at the end of Davette’s beautifully sculptured street by three that afternoon. But without headlights, they couldn’t see one from the other.

“Look at it comin’ down!” whispered the deputy in amazement.

Felix, sitting beside him at the far end of the motorhome, nodded and put out his newly lit cigarette. It was too damn smoky in there already. But every time they tried to open the door to get some fresh air, the bloody thunderstorm about drowned them.

Felix shook his head disgustedly. Midsummer, three o’clock in the afternoon, and it was probably no more than fifty degrees out there. And the damned sky was green!

Ker-plap! went another bolt of lightning, and everyone in the motorhome — which was everyone they had — jumped another foot.

“I do wish they’d stop doing that!” muttered Cat airily.

Nobody laughed.

“Well, hell,” said Jack at last. “I guess there goes today.”

“Yeah,” agreed Carl, staring out at the storm. “Funny thing is: we could’ve blown the whole damn mansion up in this stuff and I don’t think even the next-door neighbors would have heard it.” He looked at Davette and smiled. “As ‘next-door’ as this neighborhood gets, I mean,” be added.

Davette didn’t smile. She just looked at the floor between her feet and continued hugging her elbows, her face drawn and tight.

She doesn’t like being here, thought Felix.

And he wanted to go to her and do something or say something, but…

But he didn’t. Too many people around and… and what was he going to say, anyway? They were going to do this one way or another, no matter how she felt. She was the reason they were here, if anything.

“Dammit!” sputtered Jack Crow. “I would like to know if they’re here, at least. Joplin! Turn that thing on.”

“It won’t work,” replied Carl.

“Why not? Are they busted?”

“You’re trying to read the house, right?”

“Right.”

“It won’t reach.”

“Because of the storm? It’s only a couple of hundred feet.”

Carl shook his head. “It’s not the storm. It’s the location. I could read the house from here if I had a sensor in the house. But you gotta have a sensor on-site.”

“You mean already at the house.”

Carl nodded. “Or in it.”

“Now there’s a happy thought,” offered Cat.

Jack looked at him. “You up to it?”

Cat shrugged. “I wish I had a shower cap,” he said and began stripping off his chain mail.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Carl asked him.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going in. An outside wall would be close enough, wouldn’t it?”

Felix thought this was crazy. But he only said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Well, I’m sure,” declared Joplin. “It’s a shitty idea.” He looked square at Cat. “It’s also even stupider than your usual.”

“Look, Carl,” urged Jack. “It’s just a matter of him taking it up there and stashing it in the bushes or somewhere.”

“Yeah,” agreed Cat. “Just Catting it in and Catting it out.”

And he smiled.

And Carl Joplin all but erupted. “Bullshit!” he bellowed. “Bullshit! It’s been dark for what? Two hours already.”

“Yeah, but—” Cat tried.

“‘Yeah, but—’ shit! You sit your butt back down or I’ll dribble you from one end of this trailer to the other!”

And he stood over Cat, huffing and puffing, his arms out like a hungry linebacker, and it got very quiet until Cat spoke, in a small voice: “Okay, Carl,” he said, shrugging.

Carl nodded firmly. “Okay,” he confirmed, still heaving.

Then he noticed everyone watching him. He blinked, hesitated, then seemed to get more angry.

“We meeting at Felix’s bar, that Antwar place?”

Jack nodded.

Carl turned to Felix. “You sure you got enough room?”

“I’m sure.”

“Fine!” barked Carl. He looked around at the others. “Fine,” he repeated. “I’ll meet you there. I’m gonna get some more bullets for the Gunman and a suit for the kid.” He nodded toward Deputy Thompson.

He looked around at the others another moment, trying to think of something to say. Then he grabbed up the Blazer keys and stomped out into the rain.

They could just hear the Blazer’s engine start over the storm.

“I don’t get it,” wondered Kirk out loud. “What was he so mad about?”

Annabelle smiled. So did Jack and Cat.

“He wasn’t really mad, dear,” Annabelle assured him. “He was just worried about Cat.”

Kirk nodded slowly. “So that threat…”

“Oh, that wasn’t a threat,” Annabelle said quickly. “That was a hug.”

Kirk looked at her. Then the dawning showed in his eyes. He smiled.

“Oh, I get it. Carl’s shy.”

Cat and Jack nodded at each other.

“Well,” muttered Cat, “that’s one way of putting it.”

Felix didn’t much care how they put it.

“Let’s get going,” he said.

“Okay,” replied Jack. He looked at Davette. “Which way at the stop sign?”

She looked up vaguely, still clearly disturbed at where she was.

“Uh, why don’t you turn right? No… Yes, right. And then…”

Felix shook his head. “Go straight. Then take the nex… Never mind. I’ll drive.”

And he climbed over into the driver’s seat.

Jack studied him. “You know this area?”

Felix shrugged. “I grew up about three blocks from here.”

And Davette’s head came up quickly. “You did?” she whispered.

He smiled at her and nodded.

“Where?” she asked.

“DeLoche Avenue.”

Davette’s head tilted toward him. She smiled.

“How nice,” breathed Cat. “They’re both aristocrats.”

“Cat,” snarled Felix, starting the engine.

But Cat held up both palms in the air. “I know. I know,” he said. And then he added. “But it’s still sweet.”

Felix snarled as he made the motorhome move through the rain.

“We need to stop here,” announced Annabelle as they passed a shopping center a few miles later. “There. At the pharmacy.”

Jack frowned, looked at his watch. “What for?”

“That,” purred Annabelle sweetly, “is none of your business. Felix, pull up close so we don’t get wet and… Jack?”

She held her palm out to him and pointed to it with a long fingernail. Jack shrugged and dugout some money and started piling bills onto her palm. When she had about three times what they needed, Annabelle said, “Stop. We’ll be right back.”

Then she and Davette were out the door and tripping through the rain to the brightly lit automatic doors.

The men just sat there, not talking, just waiting for the women to spend the money. Jack watched the deputy find himself a comfortable spot on the motorhome’s sofa. Even in civilian clothes, the kid still looked like he was wearing a uniform.

I ought to talk to him about paying him, Jack thought. But he doesn’t seem worried about it. Just slipped right into us. We were lucky.

Felix sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, looking anxious but unworried.

Even you’re coming along, Gunman, thought Jack next. That is, as far as you’re willing to come.

“Think they’ll remember cigarettes?” Cat asked suddenly.

Kirk waved at the smoky air. “Hope not.”

They remembered. Felix cranked up the motorhome and they steamed through the rainy city to his bar. He was worried about the Antwar. He’d only had one chance to talk to them since he’d been with the Team, and he knew what happened to the staff of a cocktail lounge without someone standing over them. He had some pretty good people, but still…

Damn it was raining! And the thunder and the lightning — it took him thirty minutes to cross town, using his headlights the entire time.

It really does look like nighttime out there, he thought as be finally pulled onto his Street.

Cat was sitting behind him playing with Carl’s detector.

“Hey, Felix! Maybe I’ll quit, too, and write a book.”

“Smart move,” said Felix.

“It’ll be all about a gay vampire.”

Felix frowned, Jack and Annabelle looked at one another and groaned.

“You want to hear the title?”

“Sure. What’s the title?”

“‘The Tooth Fairy,’” replied Cat happily, just as Felix pulled the motorhome up to the Antwar’s front door and…

And the detector in Cat’s hands went wild.

Beep-Beep-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-

…and Felix yanked the wheel away from the curb tromped on the gas and the huge motorhome skidded, righted itself, then vaulted down the street, fishtailing at the first turn.

But Felix didn’t let off. He knew what that meant! He knew! And he made that bloody jump!

“Felix!” Jack yelled to him a few blocks later. “They aren’t coming!”

Felix’s foot hesitated over the throttle.

“You sure?”

“Sure! Slow this thing down.”

Felix reluctantly obeyed, slowing it all the way down, finally pulling over to a stop at the curb and turning off key. Then he just sat there, in the silence and the rain, breathing hard, before he spoke.

“They found me,” he said quietly.

Then: “They know me, too. And they’ve found me.”

It’s worse than that, Gunman, thought Jack Crow. Know you. They’ve found you. And they’re after you.

But he didn’t say this. He didn’t say anything. He like he knew what Felix was feeling. And he couldn’t but have sympathy.

But you’re in it now, Felix, he thought. In to stay.

Jack Crow did not know how Felix felt.

Felix did not know how he felt.

He felt… nothing, really. Empty and numb and…

I knew this would happen, he thought again and and again.

I knew it.

“Carl!” whispered Cat suddenly.

“Huh?” asked the Deputy.

“If they thought enough to have somebody waiting Felix’s bar — on the off chance he’d be there…”

“Then they’re bound to have somebody at the house,” Jack finished for him. And he was already Felix out of the driver’s seat.

“Get dressed,” he told them and started the engine once more. “We’ll drop the ladies off.”

“Carl!” whispered Cat again, almost to himself. He turned and looked at Annabelle’s pale face.

She looks like I feel, he thought.

Carl! He’s all alone out there…

Chapter 24

The detectors said: no vampires.

But they had been there.

Felix, wearing full chain mail, with halogen cross blazing on his chest, and with Browning drawn and cocked, stepped carefully through the shattered door of Carl’s workshop and gazed about at the destruction.

Good Lord! Maybe they are gods!

Equipment was strewn everywhere, upside down, lying on its side, crushed. Workbenches were shattered. Heavy wooden packing crates lay tossed about like so many child’s blocks. Parts of the ceiling hung almost to the floor, with wiring wrapped around it like a spider’s web.

That clear sticky goo the monsters used for blood was everywhere, on the floors, on the walls, dripping from the ceiling and from pieces of splintered crossbow bolts. The puddles ran in a vague pattern, like a funnel. The wide end was by the doorway, where the concentration was the least. But as Felix, with the others moving quietly behind him, moved forward across what was left of the room, the vampire blood grew thicker and thicker, with huge splotches there an there and there, where a crossbow bolt had split an overturn chair. By the time they reached the far end of the room, by the time they reached that barricaded closet, the goo was so thick on the floor it was slippery to walk.

Carl Joplin had made them pay.

They found his body in the closet.

He was huddled, crumpled, beaten, slashed, in one small corner.

Too small, Felix thought, for that great body.

Jack’s face in the halogen glare was unnerving. He was pale and drawn too tight and Cat, poor laughing Cat, looked a lot worse.

Surprised! realized Felix. They look so surprised!

I suppose, he thought next, that they thought Carl would always make it. Because they kept him in the rear. Because…

Because they loved him so much.

Damn.

Quiet in here, he thought next. No one talking. Everyone moving so slowly and carefully. Only the sounds of the storm whistling through, and even that had finally begun to abate.

There was a smear of that black bile the monsters spat when injured by his elbow on a broken countertop. Felix started to find something to wipe it off with, but stopped.

Let them come back. Let them come back and see this.

It was left to Felix and Father Adam and Kirk to take care of the body. Jack and Cat had left to stand outside by themselves in the rain. Adam brought the other two together and explained to them what had to be done to the body. That it must be staked and beheaded and that there really was an ancient Church ritual of interment that covered it all.

Felix was repulsed and sickened and… what? Scared? Certainly wired. His chest thumped and his thoughts went everywhere but to what he was doing as they loaded the tortured corpse into a canvas body bag on hand for just this purpose.

And the entire time some small sparking furious part of him was shouting up from his soul, Well, Felix! Is this enough? What does it take to set you off?

But mostly, he was numb.

He found himself watching young Father Adam, as they bound up and carried the body out into the rain. He knew the priest had been the one that kept the Top Secret Vatican records on Team Crow. And he wondered how he felt now.

One thing to read about it. Another to see it. Another to have them tearing at your own throat.

Cat and Jack stood still, side by side, the outlines of the great house they would now never live in rising starkly up behind them against the gray clouds and lightning. They looked… smaller than before.

They loaded Carl into the motorhome and Jack came’ over and told them that he and Cat would take the Blazer and go to the hotel and tell Annabelle and Davette. And it was quiet again as they contemplated this grinding task.

“You want us to meet you there?” Felix asked him. Jack shook his head wearily. “We’re going to the bishop’s. We’re all going to the bishop’s.” Then he paused and took a deep breath and glanced, sideways, almost warily, toward the shattered workshop door. “See you there,” he said at last and Felix thought his voice far too thin for so big a man.

Then Cat and Jack climbed into the Blazer and were gone.

Damn, thought Felix, watching their taillights disappear. Damn.

Because he knew what they were thinking, he about their guilt and those horrible goddamned pictures cause he was having those same crushing visions.

Of poor Carl Joplin hearing his detector going off knowing it was too late to get away and then desperately trying to barricade the door and then packing his weapons into the closet and then barricading that up, too, and none of it, absolutely none of it, doing any good.

And then alone in that closet it would be impossible wouldn’t it, not to hope? Not to think, not to dream, not pray that the others would be coming to save him?

And what did he think when he knew it was too late. Did he hate everyone? Did he forgive them?

Did he forgive me?

Would he now? If he had the chance?

Damn.

Chapter 25

The bishop’s residence was a heavy tudor mansion connected by wide sculptured gardens to the church of St. Lucius, the largest — and wealthiest — Catholic church in Dallas. It had balconies and a turret and several stained-glass windows sending multicolored hues into the rain.

Felix thought without the electric lights it could have been built two or three hundred years ago.

“Cat doesn’t like this guy,” offered Kirk as they pulled into the wide circular driveway. “Says he’s too good for sinners.”

Father Adam frowned. “I think you’ll find he has a different attitude now.”

Kirk smiled thinly. “Cat told us about that, too. After you pulled rank on him.”

The priest shook his bead. “After he’s had a chance to think about it.” He looked at Kirk. “There is a reason why people become priests, Kirk.”

The deputy shrugged good-naturedly, his hair seeming even more red in the half-light from the bishop’s front door.

“I’ll go in ahead,” said Father Adam as Felix pulled to a stop.

Felix nodded, lit a cigarette, and watched the priest skip through the puddles to the front door.

“Felix?” Kirk whispered from beside him.

Felix looked at him. “Yeah?”

“Do we really have to chop his head off?”

“Looks like.”

Kirk shook his head and stared out the window. He shivered.

“Who’s going to do it?”

Felix frowned. “Crow, I guess. If he’s up to it.”

“What if he isn’t? He didn’t look so good to me.”

Felix shrugged. “Then somebody else, I suppose.”

“You?”

Felix stared at him. “Why me?”

Now Kirk shrugged. “You’re second in command.”

Felix stared at him a second longer, then turned away. Jesus Christ! Is that what they think? Hell! I’m the guy that’s leaving!

Or was, he reminded himself, dimly, before they found me, too.

Shit! All the more reason to go.

So why do you feel so guilty?

I don’t. I don’t. I do not. I… I don’t know what I feel…

And he stubbed his cigarette out too forcibly into the dashboard ashtray.

Lights hit them from behind as the Blazer pulled into the driveway alongside the motorhome. Felix exchanged a look with Kirk, then climbed outside to greet them.

Cat still looked terrible, ashen and pale. But Jack Crow looked… pretty damned good. His broad shoulders were straight and his bearing seemed to have… But no. Those eyes. Too deep. Sunken and dark and unseeing.

“Oh, Felix!” cried Annabelle as she came around the side of the Blazer, eyes pouring tears.

And then she did an odd thing. She threw her arms around him and pressed her head into his chest and sobbed.

Felix stared blankly at her. Then he did what she wanted: he put his arms around her and comforted her.

Not just what she wanted, he thought suddenly.

What she expected.

As he stood there holding the sobbing Annabelle, he saw Davette, tears also in her eyes. They exchanged wan smiles.

Who do these people think I am?

“Mr. Crow!” called out from the front door.

It was the bishop, with Adam and what looked like his entire staff trailing behind him from the house. The cleric came to a breathless stop before Jack.

“Mr. Crow!” the bishop repeated. “We are so grieved at your loss. We…” And then he stumbled, fishing for words. At last, he held his arms out, palms up. “I’m so very sorry, Mr. Crow. I didn’t understand.”

Felix watched Jack eye the cleric suspiciously for a moment. But what can you say, Jack? This guy clearly means it. Look at him.

Jack nodded abruptly, said, “Thank you, bishop. I appreciate it. We…” and he turned and made a gesture to include the others.

The bishop was way ahead of him.

“Father Adam has told me everything. Come inside. Please. Let us help you.”

They did. And the bishop was, Felix decided later, quite wonderful. He was everywhere at once, it seemed, tending to them. And where he wasn’t, his staff was, several young priests or priests-to-be — Felix was never sure which. They got them inside and dry and sitting down and got them something to drink and something to munch on while dinner was being prepared and were not offended when no one had an appetite and it was more the bishop’s manner than anything else. That haughty, aristocratic, God’s-house-is-too-good-for-the-likes-of-you attitude had been replaced by a focus of warmth and keen piercing insight.

Felix had never met the man before. But this guy was a priest.

But it was his help with Carl’s body that meant the most to the Team. He listened quietly and patiently as the macabre necessities of a vampire killer’s funeral were explained to him. He did this without evincing shock or repulsion or anything else they didn’t need right then. After he listened he left briefly to change to his full bishop’s robes and ordered his people to do the same and something that had always before been just one more dreadful chore would become, in the light of the many golden candles and the soothing symbols of the bishop’s office, something else.

As soon as they found Jack.

Felix was in one of the many rest rooms trying to tidy himself up for the ritual to come. He’d managed to dry his hair and smooth out his work shirt some. Well, maybe the windbreaker would cover some of the wrinkles the way it covered the Browning. He had thought about taking it off, this being a funeral and all. But it really was a warrior’s funeral, wasn’t it?

There was a light tap on the door, followed by Davette’s voice.

“Felix?”

He opened the door. She had made herself up, too. Her honey-blond hair was soft and clean and neatly combed and beautiful.

“Hello,” was all he could think to say.

“Hello,” she smiled back, her eyes downcast shyly. “Have you seen Jack?”

“Huh? No.”

“We can’t find him and… Well, they’re ready to start.”

Felix nodded at her and then stepped out of the rest room into the hall. Annabelle and Kirk and some of the bishop’s people were there, looking concerned.

“Where’s Cat?”

“He’s in the chapel already,” whispered Annabelle worriedly.

“What about Adam?”

“They’re all in there, Felix,” Davette said. “It’s just Jack.”

“Okay,” he said, thinking. He started walking down the hallway but paused when he realized they were all following him. He turned and looked back, at their eager hopeful faces and…

And he wanted to scream at them: What do you want from me?

But instead he said, “We’ll meet you in the chapel.”

And then he just stood there waiting until they reluctantly dispersed.

When they were gone he thought a second, decided he knew where Crow would be. He continued down the hallway, walking on some thick paisley-looking rug that felt rich and expensive, with paintings on either side of him hung on the richly paneled walls that were probably more so. The hallway took him to the center of the house, a massive twenty-foot-ceiling, sixty-foot-long place called, for some reason, the Common Room.

Felix hadn’t expected to find Jack there, but it was on his way. He paused for a moment, admiring this room that looked like the lobby of the world’s most exclusive hotel. Nice work, if you can get it.

But he knew where Jack was and it wasn’t in these magnificent rooms. Wasn’t in the house.

Felix went through the formal dining room, through the grand oak-paneled entry hall, and opened the front door.

The night was still cool for summer, but the storm was over and the stars were coming out. Felix stepped through the door and closed it behind him and stood there a moment letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Ten feet away, a figure sat on the edge of the wide front porch, his great back a dim softness in the shadows.

“Jack?” he called softly, almost whispering.

“Here,” was the tired reply.

Felix hesitated, then walked down the broad steps and sat down. The rain-drenched steps began immediately to soak through his pants and he stood right back up again.

He looked down at Jack, sitting forward — hunched forward — with his elbows on his knees.

“Kinda wet, isn’t it?”

The dim figure shrugged, a slight motion in the dark.

Get up, you sonuvabitch! Felix wanted to scream, sudden anger and disgust welling from within him. He was furious with Jack cowering out here and he wanted to grab him and shake him and some part of him knew he was being unfair.

But dammit! Jack was supposed to be the leader of this deal and there were people in there waiting on him. Counting on him.

He tried to calm himself before he spoke, but he knew his tone came out hard. “Time to go, man. Time to do it.”

At first Crow didn’t move. Then he stood up slowly and put his hands on his hips and stared out into the night.

“Got a cigarette?” he whispered harshly.

Felix nodded. “Sure.” He fished out a smoke and handed it over and thumbed his lighter.

Jesus, Jack! he thought when the flame illuminated the man’s face.

For Crow looked tight and drawn and weak and… and beaten.

But he didn’t say anything. And Crow didn’t say anything. He just puffed two or three times on the smoke, still staring into the night. Then Felix felt him take a long deep breath and let it out. Then he tossed the cigarette away into sparks, pulled up his belt, and beaded for the door.

“Come on,” he said gruffly.

So off they went to do the deed and as they walked, Jack leading, Felix trailing behind, a transformation took place. At first Jack looked pitiful and sorry, with his wrinkled shirttail out and his baggy pants wet on the seat from the damp step. The walk wasn’t much better, more like a reluctant lope. But steadily, the pace quickened and those great shoulders thrust up and those powerful hands reached back and thumbed the shirttail in and that big head went up high on his neck and…

And Felix felt himself smiling in amazement. Thirty seconds before he had been disgusted and now he thought: Look at this guy! Look at him, coming through.

By the time the reached the hallway outside the chapel Jack was strutting like a drillmaster. He stopped, abruptly, outside the chapel door and took another deep breath and turned and looked at Felix.

Felix looked back into those same sunken eyes and he saw the pain was still there and the weariness was still there and decided that was probably more impressive then any of it.

Jack nodded questioningly at Felix.

Felix nodded back.

And they went in and did it.

They had Carl’s body wrapped up in some heavy white fabric and laid out on a table up in front by the altar. The bishop was there, surrounded by his robed attendants and that smoking goblet-thing they used and dozens of candles. The women sat in a pew in the back row. The men, Kirk and Cat and a robed Adam, stood by the table.

The whole thing was, Felix had to admit, beautiful. You really needed Catholics for the big stuff.

Jack walked up to the table and Felix took the empty spot beside him. Felix had thought Carl’s body looked awkward lying there. And that’s when he noticed the saw.

The saw was not a saw at all, but a sharp stone fashioned to slip inside a grooved harness that supported the head and neck of the body. “Cutting” consisted of rapping the blunt end of the stone sharply with a heavy wooden mallet which lay there at Jack’s right hand. Beside the mallet was the stake, an intricately carved piece of wood about half the size of a baseball bat and proportionately thinner. In the light from the candles Felix could just read, on the side facing him: “Carl Joplin.” He could see further lettering on the other side of the rounded wood but couldn’t read it.

First were the prayers, not too different from the mass Felix had become used to, but longer somehow.

Or maybe I’m just ready to get it over with, he thought.

And then he thought, Could I do this if I had to?

Can I stand here now while Jack does it?

Then the time was there and Jack Crow reached out and fitted the cutting stone in place and then he grabbed up the mallet and held it high and muttered something Felix couldn’t hear and then the mallet came down and there was an awful “snick” noise and the fabric around the throat separated cleanly and then heavy fluid began to stain the edges.

Jack didn’t pause to tamp the flow with the towel there at his other hand. Instead he grasped the stake, placed it over the heart of one of his dearest comrades, and drove it mightily home with one solid rap.

There were more prayers but Felix didn’t hear them. He didn’t hear anything but the pounding of his own heart and wondered if that was fear or hatred of the beasts that made this necessary.

After a while, Felix realized he was the only one still standing there except for the bishop’s men ready to take away the body. He nodded self-consciously and stepped back to give them room. But just before he did he craned his neck around to see the writing on the other side of the stake.

It read: “Not one damned regret.”

Chapter 26

“Rome,” said Felix and the entire table went silent.

“Rome,” he repeated. “We’ve got to get to Rome.”

And they looked at him like he was some rude interloper but he really didn’t give a shit. He appreciated the meal and the bishop’s hospitality and he knew damn well everyone had needed this restful few hours in this great house.

But dammit! It was time to face the facts. The vampires were still out there.

Still looking for them.

Still monsters.

Felix turned to Adam. “Can the Church get us there? Right away?”

Adam blinked, stared at him, looked to Crow, who was sitting across from him.

Crow sighed and looked down at his empty plate. He looked tired.

“Okay, Felix,” he said softly, “let’s talk.”

He pushed his heavy chair back from the bishop’s grand table and stood up. He looked at the others around the table.

“Let’s all talk,” he said with a wan smile and motioned them to follow.

Felix hesitated, suspicious, then stood up with the rest of them — including the bishop — and followed Crow into the Common Room. The bishop took his customary chair, a great embroidered something that looked like a throne. Jack sat in a big leather piece beside him. Felix remained standing next to the great hearth. The rest of them took seats around the huge pile of Team equipment piled up in the center of the room. They had brought it with them along with Carl’s remains. Crossbows and crossbow bolts and pikes and spare pistols and several cases of silver bullets. The stack was a mess because that’s the way they had loaded it into the motorhome and that’s the way they had brought it into the house because there hadn’t really been enough room in the motorhome to store it the way they had — far from Carl’s body.

But somehow that had seemed important at the time.

When they were all settled and cigarettes were lit and attendants had found the necessary ashtrays…

“All right, Felix,” began Jack Crow, “let’s hear it.”

Felix paused a moment, trying to read Jack’s eyes. Was there a challenge in there somewhere? Anything?

Whatever.

And he got down to it:

They were being hunted. They didn’t know who was hunting them or where they were. All they had was a clue that somebody had taken over Davette’s house and even if that was correct… If that was correct, they still didn’t have enough people to take the target.

“I would have no idea whatsoever how to blow that wall the way Carl planned. Does anybody else know explosives that well?”

There was a pause before they all shook their heads.

Felix nodded, satisfied.

“And it would be suicide to go down into those shadows away from the sunshine. Remember the ‘god’ in the Cleburne Jail?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“This Team has had it. No place to run, not enough firepower to fight, no place to hide — but one. Rome. We have got to get to Rome. And I mean: now.”

It was quiet after that. Uncomfortable and quiet and all eyes were on Jack Crow but it was the bishop who spoke next.

“If you will forgive me,” he began with a kindly nod toward Jack, “I think this young man is right.” He moved quickly to soothe his own words. “I don’t mean to intrude, Mr. Crow, I assure you. But I have tended people all my life and many of them were soldiers and… And you — all of you — must take rest.”

And all eyes went back to Jack and then there was more silence, long heavy silence, before he suddenly nodded.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

Too quietly for Felix. “What?” he asked leaning forward.

Jack looked up at him and his eyes were dead. “I said ‘okay.’ Rome.”

Felix nodded. Nothing more.

“Fine,” said the bishop, sounding relieved. “In the morning Father Adam and I will call..

“What about tonight?” interrupted Felix. “And while I’m at it, don’t you think we oughta get a move on? It’s full dark and they know we know the bishop, don’t they?”

The bishop smiled and rose up from his chair.

“I shouldn’t worry, young man. I should think being within these walls would cause them great pain.”

It did. It hurt.

Even here, from the far edges of the grounds, the wretched torment from that ghastly stained-glass glow blew racking agonies through the Young Master’s temples.

And the beasts… The beasts did not form at his gesture, did not close about him at his shining will. No. They circled and keened and stepped their dead souls’ weight from foot to foot with only the sweet smell of their decay and his own blissful memory of it to recommend them.

But they would obey him.

They would obey the Young Master on this, his premier solo task from the Great Master himself. They would obey.

Despite the pain.

Despite the searing misery of the Monster’s temple.

Because they were hungry.

Hours and hours they are risen this day and the thirst was rich and clasping their brute selves and they would obey.

They would obey if he must fling their rotting forms through those agonized windows.

“Beasts!” he shrilled to them, filling his own mind with the volume of his determination.

“Children!” he sang out mote and his thoughts penetrated them and they turned to him.

And he strode forward, ignoring the greater agony of this nearness, forward step after step, until he halted and raised a long beautiful pale hand and one shiny black nail and pointed at the shadows on the windows and spoke out loud and in his will:

“Food!”

“Food!!”

“Fooood!”

The collective hissing rose and broke happily upon his Young Master’s ears.

“Foooood…”

Felix was feeling pretty good just before it all caved in.

He had gotten what he wanted from Crow. Given Jack’s listlessness, that hadn’t been so hard, and he had felt some pangs about ramrodding everything past the mourning leader, but Felix figured none of that made a bit of difference if he could keep someone alive long enough to bitch about it later.

He had them up and off their butts and getting ready to move. The bishop and Adam had called Rome, had gotten transportation, had arranged all the passport difficulties. Getting back into America was going to be interesting, but that’s what voter-registration cards were for.

Frankly, Felix looked forward to seeing ’em try to keep Annabelle out.

All in all it was looking good. Better, even, than he had expected. For a change had come over the Team once it had dawned on them that it was over. A sense of grudging relief had come about, slowly at first, but after less than an hour, even Jack had given into it: Because, dammit, it was a relief to get down off your guard and know that rest was coming.

That vise-tight concentration, that desperate focus, was loosening up.

There were even some jokes as the men gathered together and organized their stack of weaponry and at one point Crow had looked around at the smiles on the faces and then turned to Felix and said, “Okay, Gunman. Okay.”

He hadn’t said any more than that. But everyone had known what he meant.

You’re quite a dude, Jack, Felix thought admiringly.

But he had been too hep to say anything out loud.

Looking good, thought Felix. And he glanced over to where She sat, talking quietly with Annabelle and the bishop. Just that was enough for Felix.

She would live.

Yeah. Looking good.

And that’s what they were doing, all fiddling and talking about the Common Room, with its wall of stained glass and beautiful furnishings and smiles, when Felix asked Cat about something that had intrigued him:

Carl’s wooden stake.

“We’ve all got one,” Cat told him. “We had this Belgian kid working with us a couple of years ago. Raised a carpenter. He carved them for everyone.”

“Everyone? You’ve got one, too?”

Cat eyed him carefully. “I do.”

Kirk, loading silver bullets beside him, grimaced.

Cat noticed and grinned. “You guys want one?”

“I think I’ll pass,” replied the deputy.

Felix was studying Cat. “Do they all say the same thing?”

“No. We all have something different. Mine’s even shaped different, it’s flat, like a paddle.”

“What does it say?”

“My name.”

“Is that all?”

“No. It says something else on the other side.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you’re ready for it.”

“Try me.”

Cat’s grin widened. “Okay. It’s the answer to the question: ‘How do you like your stake?’”

“Huh?” said Kirk.

“What does it say?” Felix wanted to know.

Cat’s eyes were devilish. “Medium Rare.”

They had begun to laugh when the first of the stained-glass windows just blew into the room whizzing glass like shrapnel into the furniture and the far walls and then that smell — that smell of decay — and Felix thought, Oh, my God, my God! They’re here!

And he got to his feet and spun toward the sound and dragged out the Browning and for just an instant all was calm and eerie and… and impossible, because they had just been sitting here, just sitting here laughing and talking and ready to go, to get out of this, out of all of it.

And they all were there, frozen with surprise and dawning fear, their mouths open and their eyes wide, frozen and unbelieving and so tired. And then the beast who had burst within them as if thrown through the window shook its shaggy head and reared up from its place on all fours in front of the window and those blood-red eyes shone on them and the black mouth opened those glistening fangs and it hissed…

Felix raised the gun to fire as the second window exploded and the glass flew again and there were screams and then another explosion and then another and the whole wall of stained glass collapsed into the room and the smell was there and the brutes were clambering through with their dead rotting skin through the broken glass and shattered window frames and the hissing, the hisssssing filled the house of God and their air and Felix felt spears of pain on the side of his neck and then the blood running down and he knew the glass, the fractured, flying glass, had got him and he fired at something through the crashes of debris just as the next screams began.

It was… who? One of the bishop’s men… Bryan? Was that his name? One of the monsters had crashed through on top of him and now was on all fours above him, like some slavering undead bear, and Bryan screamed and cried and tried to pull himself out from under and the brute held him there, fast, with one rotting hand on his chest and Bryan screamed again and again and scrambled desperately backward, flailing his hands and feet but he could get no traction on that beautiful thick carpet and the beast above him…

Did nothing.

None of them were moving! They seemed stunned and stunted and almost paralyzed and two or three of them were holding their heads with rancid hands. Hurting. Hurting.

But there were so many! So many of them!

“It’s this place,” cried the bishop. And he rose up and strode forward, the robes of his office swaying out around him, and he grasped the great cross about his neck and held it aloft.

“This place!” he shouted triumphantly. “They cannot bear the House of the Lord!”

“Get them back!” roared Jack Crow.

Felix turned to see what Jack was saying and saw them, saw the women, saw her! The women were here — she was here, My God My God!

“Get them back!” roared Crow again. “Cat! Adam! Move ’em back!”

“Where! Outside?”

“No!” shouted Felix. “Put them… put them in the entry hall and close it…

“Yes!” echoed Crow. “And lock the doors and… Cat! Get the Blazer! Move it!”

And that’s when Bryan lunged backward and the black nails at his throat tore the skin and the red blood welled out and the dead bear awoke and his gray lips spread wide and the fangs started down.

Felix and Kirk fired simultaneously and the monster flipped backward from the impact, howling and screeching those awful sounds and the others, the others! So many of them! They woke up too! They lunged toward them — And the bishop. The bishop roared back at them!

“Back! Back, you children of Satan! Back and be purged!”

And he walked toward them, holding the cross in front of him like a goddamned pistol or something and they shouted at him to stop, to come back with them, to fall back, but — The one that got him was so huge. It had long black hair and grimy coveralls and it came from the bishop’s side — he never saw it — and those huge dead arms fell like trees on the cleric and embraced him and squeezed him and…

And Felix couldn’t get a shot! The bishop was blocking the shot!

The bishop didn’t scream. He snarled with fury and twisted around in that death grip.

“In the name of Christ!” he roared into those dead, red eyes, into those greasy, slick fangs, and he shoved the cross into that peeling face…

And it burned it! It burned it! Steam spewed out and the stench of the burning flesh swam through the air and…

And from where came that impossibly bright light arcing from where the cross smote the flesh?

The ghoul howled with pain and thrashed its burly head and tried to duck back from that acetylene cross.

But it would not let go of the bishop.

Instead, it squeezed. Spasmodically, monstrously, it clamped tighter its beast arms and the bishop wailed as his insides were vised together but he never let go of the cross, never stopped jamming it into the burning face, never stopped cleansing him.

Even as he died.

“No!” shouted Kirk, aghast, leaping forward. “Let him go, you filthy…”

“Kirk!” cried Felix. “No! It’s too late to—”

But the deputy didn’t listen. He took one more quick stride. Then two. And he was within a yard of the death grip when the ghoul, still in agony from the dead bishop’s cross, had finally had enough. It jerked backward and threw the bishop’s limp form away, his arms as thick as branches flying outward from his body and his right forearm bashed full on into the deputy’s forehead…

And crushed his skull…

And snapped his neck…

And Kirk turned and looked with astonishment at Felix and then the gunman saw/felt the light go out behind the eyes.

And his strong young body slumped lifeless to the floor.

Felix was still staring, wide-mouthed and unbelieving, at his dead comrade when something crashed hissing and snapping into him from the blind side. They went careening over sideways into a side table and Felix heard the table legs splinter and crack and he ended up propped against the tilted tabletop but these were only minor distant details beside the spitting decay smell of the ghoul grabbing and hissing at him and Felix managed to twist about and jam his left hand into the throat under those snapping jaws and then he was eye to bloody eye with the monster and…

Those eyes burned red and primal and they wanted him. Those slick gooey fangs snapped for him. And he began to lose his grip as the gray skin at the zombie’s throat slid away under his fingers and the hissing increased and the monster had him by both sides of the head and it leaned hard down to reach him, his throat or his cheek or his eyes and the pupils were almost sideways with some impossible glint.

Supernatural, Jack Crow had told him.

And the gunman wrenched his pistol under the monster’s chin and emptied it.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM

The monster warped and howled with each impact, spitting black decay and pain, but it still held him and those claws on either side of his head jerked with his pain and cracked the gunman’s head like a thunderclap against the tabletop and Felix… lost it.

The concussion, the impact… Am I dead? he wondered, as all became fuzzy and indistinct and the shattering sounds and shrieks of battle faded down.

Or just dying? Or knocked out or…

The black man lay a few feet from him, twitching and shivering. Not dead, but not coming.

And the vaguely conscious part of Felix thought this was very good.

And then he thought he should maybe find his gun and:

Here it is, in my hand.

And then he reached around and got a new clip-he knew how to do that. He knew how to change clips and he did and then he held the newly loaded gun in his lap and felt very proud and he felt the blood from his head injury flowing down his neck and he saw the other monsters had come to also, understood that they had been only temporarily stunned by the silver bullets.

And by God’s House.

The bishop is dead, thought Felix.

Kirk Thompson is dead too, he thought next.

Soon I will die, too, won’t I?

But I still have my gun and what I will do is: I will shoot them when they come near me and it will not stop them but it will hurt them and that is better than nothing and…

And so he lay there, stunned, against the overturned table, and watched them come for him.

And saw Jack Crow save what was left.

He saw it from a long way off, it seemed, as though Jack and the monsters and even the rest of the building, were far, far away. But he still saw it. And what he saw, even from the end of his conked tunnel, was amazing. Jack Crow did things Felix couldn’t imagine being done. He did things no one else but Jack Crow, Crusader, by God, Jack Crow, could have done.

He was everywhere at once. And had to be. The other goons had arisen at the same time as the black man at Felix’s feet, and though they were slow and ponderous and unthinking, there were too many of them. And they were so hungry, reaching for him, lunging at him, grisly fingers grasping and clawing and — And Jack Crow bashed ’em back. He emptied his crossbow and emptied his pistol and grabbed up a handful of pikes and laid into them. He bashed them, he spitted them, be carved them with splintered ends. There was no one else:

Adam guarded the women in the entry hail. Cat was out bringing up the Blazer. Felix lay almost comatose against the shattered table. For the next few crucial minutes there would be no one else to hold them off but Jack alone.

And Jack didn’t seem to give a shit. He went after them with a ferocity that Felix, even stunned as be was, could hardly believe. It was like some sort of grotesque juggling act. Jack would slam two of them down somehow, but by that time two more would have arisen again, spitting and hissing and reaching for him. And he would slam them down again, spear them with the pikes or shoot them through their faces or once, just flat bust them in the mouth with his fist.

He’s incredible, thought Felix. He’s bigger than life.

And then he thought: I’ve got to get up! I’ve got to do something!

But then Jack was there, beside him, speaking softly but quickly: “C’mon, buddy. We’ve gotta move. C’mon!”

And then be turned and kicked the black man full in the face, the one with nine silver bullets in him, who had only now started to rise again.

“C’mon, Gunman,” said Jack, lifting him with surprising gentleness, to his feet.

Pain seared through Felix’s skull when his head came loose from the table and he saw Jack wince in sympathy but they didn’t stop, they got Felix up and they got him moving and the pain began to clear his head and then they were in the entry hail and the women were there, Annabelle and Davette, huddled together against a wall and dammit if Annabelle didn’t manage a smile for them.

And then Jack and Adam were closing the huge sliding oak doors to the living room and dragging some antique side table across the marble to barricade it. The other doors were already closed with other furniture stacked against them. Only the massive front door, standing open to the returning rain, was free.

“Your head,” said a small voice.

Felix turned and saw Davette, her hand frozen in midair where she had started to reach for his wound.

“I’m all right,” Felix managed to say.

And she nodded vaguely and stepped back to Annabelle and Felix thought: Move, Felix! Wake up!

And he shook his head for more pain and gritted his teeth and looked down at the Browning still in his hand and…

And it helped. Some.

“Where’s Cat?” Jack wanted to know.

Father Adam shook his head. “Haven’t seen him. Do you think…”

Jack was at the front door, looking warily out into the night.

“Do I think what?” he barked.

Adam swallowed. “We haven’t seen any masters. Maybe they couldn’t come in here. Maybe they’re…”

And he gestured out the door.

“Oh, shit!” sighed Jack.

And the dead grasping hands began scratching at the sliding oak doors.

Jack looked at the doors, saw them start to lean inward with the weight and thirst of the dead.

“Well, we can’t stay here. Maybe…”

Bright headlights framed the door and there was a loud crunching noise as Cat vaulted the Blazer up the front steps and came to a skidding stop on the wide front landing of the great home.

“Whenever ya’all are ready!” he shouted through the driver’s window.

Jack herded everyone out and the Blazer doors were yanked open. Jack took the wheel. Annabelle sat in the passenger seat beside him. Felix sat in the back seat behind her, gun in hand.

And that’s where he was when they bounced down the steps and over the curb and onto the street and were racing half a block away and a streak of movement appeared from the right and something slammed into the side of the Blazer and breaking glass slashed through the interior and the Blazer tilted up crazily on two wheels before bouncing back down on all four wheels, skidding wildly on the slick pavement, side-swiping a parked car and coming to a stop in the middle of the road.

The grasping talons through Annabelle’s shattered passenger window finally woke Felix up. He lunged over the front seat and jammed the automatic into the Young Master’s face and jerked the trigger three times.

The monster’s face disappeared back out through the window and then reappeared, hissing and spitting and shivering, two holes in its moon-pale skin, the clear blood pulsing out with the black spitting mucus from the mouth and…

And Jack tried to move the Blazer but the engine had stalled and then it wouldn’t start in Drive, so he had to work the gearshift and…

And the fiend lunged back at them, back at Felix, the source of his pain, and Felix fired again and again and the head snapped back once more but…

But one of the talons still grasped the edge of the doorway and the whole damned Blazer shook with the monster’s pain and fury and Felix leaned way out over Annabelle’s seat and out the window and twisted his body around and saw the monster, hunched against the side of the vehicle, and it looked up at him, hissed and spat at him, and Felix shot it through the right eye and it vaulted back and lost its grip on the Blazer.

The engine roared to life, Jack tromped on the gas pedal, and they were off.

They could see the creature through the back windows jerking itself to its feet in the middle of the road. Felix, still hanging halfway out the window, managed to shoot one more time.

The Blazer didn’t slow for several blocks while Felix clambered past everyone to the rear of the truck bed to be ready to shoot again. But nothing came. No monster sprinted after them through the rain.

“Relax, Jack!” called Felix at last from the rear. “No one’s coming.”

But Jack kept his foot down hard.

“Where are you going?” yelled Felix, irritated by the careening car.

“Hospital,” said Crow without turning around.

And Adam took Felix by the arm and pointed. He looked where he was told and saw her, saw Annabelle, slumped across the Blazer’s console. Cat was frantically dabbing at her throat with a shirt. But the blood, from a dozen wounds of exploded safety glass, poured thick across her still features.

Chapter 27

“She cannot be moved.”

Jack was getting angry. “Look, doctor, I’m not sure you know what’s—”

But Cat grabbed his boss’s arm.

“Jack! Goddammit! He’s not just saying he’s against it! He’s saying she’ll die! Annabelle will die!”

Crow looked darkly at the two of them, then shrugged the hand off his arm and stepped away down the hail. The three policemen eyed him suspiciously but made no move. Jack had called in every chit and favor he had with the Dallas Police to keep from being arrested, even for questioning. But nobody had actually told the patrolmen just exactly why these heavily armed and obviously fresh-from-violence people weren’t to be touched. And they were wary.

“Dammit!” muttered Jack and looked at his watch. “Dammit!” he repeated when he saw the time.

Because they had already been here all night and most of the day. Because it was three o’clock in the afternoon. How many more hours until sunset?

Until night?

Until they came?

“Mr. Crow,” the doctor tried again, “it’s not just a matter of blood loss. It’s the trauma to the system. Her signs are very low, her heart has fluttered, she has a concussion, she—”

“Hell, doctor, she’s awake, for chrissakes!”

The doctor remained calm. He nodded. “Sometimes. Barely. She’s a strong woman. But she’s not strong enough to leave intensive care. Not for at least one more day. She must have constant monitoring. She must have the IVs. She must stay here.”

He stepped forward and said, more gently, “Don’t worry, Mr. Crow. We’ll take good care of her. She’ll be fine.”

Jack Crow looked at the man and knew he meant it and knew he didn’t know what he was dealing with and he knew something else: there was no way the Team could ever convince him otherwise in time.

Felix had been leaning against the corridor wall with his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking sinister with his bandaged head over the even dozen stitches they had had to give him. He uncrossed his arms and stepped away from the wall.

“Is there a place… a room, where we could talk?” he asked.

The doctor eyed him gratefully and led them around a corner to a small anteroom that, judging from the cigarette smoke, served as the break area for the Emergency Room staff. It had a couple of tables covered with soggy cardboard coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays, some plastic chairs, a vending machine, a pay phone.

The three men sat down and added to the smoke.

“Jack,” Cat all but whispered, “we’re going to have to risk it, you know.”

Crow didn’t look at him, didn’t respond, just puffed hard on his cigarette.

Cat exchanged a look with Felix before trying again.

“We can’t move her, Jack. And… well, we can put sensors outside, out in front, so we’ll know they’re coming. Hell, they might not even come.”

Crow glared at him. “They know she’s hurt, Cherry. Do you really believe they won’t come?”

Cat just looked at him.

Crow turned to Felix. “Do you?”

Felix met his gaze. “No.”

And it was quiet for a while.

“But we’ve got some options here,” Cat continued. “We don’t have to fight. They’ll probably come in the front — why wouldn’t they? And we’ll hear them and we can move her then!”

“Give us that again,” said Felix, interested.

“We move her out the back. Miles of hallways in this place. We’ll just wheel her down the hall and into an elevator and just pick a route out the back. Look, I’ve checked it out. I know just where to park the Blazer…

And he went on for a while in convincing style and much detail, like it was, really, a great opportunity instead of the disaster it was.

Felix sat in silence as be spoke, hating it. They all knew better. When would they come? From which direction? How many? How were they going to stop them at night? And did anyone really believe they could just trot through this hospital wheeling a critical patient? Fighting vampires along the way?

Felix sat there and listened to Cat and watched Jack Crow and saw him again, haggard and beaten but coming through to tend to Carl’s body. And then relaxed and relieved and hopeful before ten minutes later having to save the whole show single-handed.

And now Cat trying to convince everybody this was all going to be all right.

The Gunman smiled.

Cat stopped talking abruptly when he saw the smile.

“What is it, Felix?” Jack asked. “What do you think of the Plan, here?”

“It stinks.”

“I suppose you’d like to just get out of here.”

“I sure would.”

“Are you?”

Felix felt his own smile growing. Do you bastards really think I’d abandon Annabelle? Or you, Crow, after what you’ve done?

“Jack,” he said at last, “you’re a real prick.”

Crow eyed him a moment. “True,” he replied seriously.

And… “Okay, okay, okay,” he continued wearily. “I guess we’re stuck with Cat’s little scheme. Unless the Gunman here has something new?”

“’Fraid not.”

“’Fraid you’d say that. Okay. But I want two escape routes. Get back to the bishop’s and fetch the motorhome. I want two ways out of this place. You and Cat figure out where we should stash the vehicles. And you’d better take Davette somewhere. Where were we supposed to stay last night? The one by the Galleria?”

“She won’t go,” said Father Adam from the doorway. “Huh?” asked Jack.

Adam shook his head. “She won’t leave Annabelle’s side.” Felix snorted. “Like hell she won’t. You just—”

Cat shook his head, too. “She won’t, Felix.”

Crow and Felix exchanged looks.

“This is crap,” said one of them.

Cat leaned forward on the table.

“Hey, guys,” he said gently. “We’re getting down to it. And everybody’s got his own style.”

Felix stared at him like he was from Mars.

“‘His own style,’ eh?” muttered Jack, almost to himself. “Well, that’s nice.”

Then he leaned over and put his cigarette out and started giving orders.

“We set the detectors and we fetch the motorhome and we scope out two escape routes and then, a couple of hours before dark, somebody — you, Gunman, it’s your woman — pick up our pretty little martyr and her style and put her ass in a motel because that’s my style and I run things here.”

Felix grinned along with the rest of them and wondered why? Why? We haven’t got a fucking prayer…

“Mr. Crow?” came from behind Adam. It was Annabelle’s nurse. The men got to their feet.

“Is she…?” Jack began.

The nurse smiled tightly. “She’s awake again. She wants to talk to you.”

“Right,” said Jack, already moving. “The rest of you get moving. I want the motorhome here in an hour, with all the beds down. We’ve got to get some sleep before tonight.”

Annabelle, near death, white as a sheet, surrounded by beeping electronics and pierced through with running tubes, still managed to be radiant.

Talk about style, thought Jack to himself as Davette got up and he took her seat.

“Annabelle,” he whispered to her, “don’t you ever sleep?”

She didn’t even bother to smile. “Jack,” she whispered huskily, “we’ve got to talk…”

But only she talked and Jack listened and he absolutely hated what he heard.

Annabelle had figured it out. She was half-dead, but she knew the score. She knew she couldn’t move. She knew the night was coming. She knew the vampires, just like Jack, had their own connections. They knew who the Team was, knew all about them. Knew about her, had actually seen her and knew she was hurt.

And she knew they would come for her and the police would never know how to react or possibly even believe what they’d seen after it was all over.

No. She had decided. They must leave her here.

And Jack tried to reassure her, tried most of the junk Cat had just finished throwing at him, that it wasn’t like they were trapped, they could always get out the back and, besides, there was no guarantee the vampires really would show up here and…

And she knew better, as always.

“Jack!” she pleaded, her eyes frantic, “you must go. You must save yourselves!”

And Crow looked right at her and said, “We’ll see.”

And she knew she had lost.

“At least get Davette.”

“I’ve already taken care of that,” Jack whispered to her “I put Felix on it.”

And she almost smiled. “About time.”

Then she sighed and looked away for a moment. When she looked back her eyes were filled with tears and she reached up her pale skinny arm to him and he leaned down so she could caress his dirty, unshaven face.

“Jack…” she sighed. “Sweet Jack. You were… You were always such a good boy…”

And he didn’t cry because he couldn’t let her carry that, too. But his eyes were hot and her tiny fingers on his face were the softest touch he had ever known.

Then she gave him a playful slap and pushed him a way.

“Where’s my purse?” she demanded. “I must look a fright.”

“Huh? You look fine…” sputtered Crow.

“What do you know about it?” she replied in her lady voice. “Find my purse, please.”

So he rummaged around and found it and opened it and handed it to her.

“Oh, good,” she said after she had glanced inside. “I’ve got my mirror. Now, run along.”

Jack frowned. “Don’t you think you should be resting? Or—”

“I repeat: what do you know about it? Now go away.”

He rose, uncertain. “I’ll get Davette,” he offered.

“Oh, please, Jack. I think I can put my own makeup on after so-and-so many years. All of you: leave me alone to myself for just one instant. Please!”

“Well, okay,” he muttered back, defeated once more. And he stumbled out through the curtain drawn around her bed and informed Davette and left to find the others.

The glass of water on the hospital tray was close by, but it took her a long time to reach it and the effort exhausted her. She lay back against the pillow, careful not to spill the cup, and rested a moment. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind but instead she saw the house in Pebble Beach and she saw the zoo and she saw the faces of all her boys who had died.

“Please, God!” she whispered. “No more of them. No more…”

And she leaned forward and fumbled one-handed through her purse and the pills were still there, where they had been for the last year.

My boys.

Chapter 28

Felix’s disgust started kicking in when he had to shut down the Antwar Saloon.

He had to do it. It would delay his return to the hospital, but he couldn’t have his customers and employees sitting innocently around the place while vampires wandered through looking for the owner.

No. He had to do it. And it only took half an hour.

But then, sitting there at his desk, with his closing note to his employees and their checks all written, it started getting to him. The waste. The whole, useless, worthless messy waste of it got to him. Dammit! It wasn’t like he had much of a life, anyway, and he was going to have to lose even that? Shit.

Jack Crow and the Crusaders. Noble and brave and tough and all the rest of it.

But losers. Losers because they were losing.

No way they were going to make it through tonight. No way they were going to stop the vampires at that hospital. Witnesses? Hell, the vampires wouldn’t care and, anyway, who would believe it? And who would believe it after seeing it? A couple of days later — with everyone treating them like they were nuts — and even the eyewitnesses would think they had imagined it.

The ones that lived, anyway.

Shit.

Crow loses — what is it? Six, seven men? And he goes to Rome and comes back with what? One priest. Father Adam was a good man. Well, better than good. In fact…

But he was still just one guy. Crow shoulda brought back twenty men, all priests, and a bishop of his own.

But he didn’t. He didn’t do a lot of things and because of that they were all gonna die.

He turned in his desk chair and looked out the picture window that overlooked the bar. Only it was dark in the bar now. The only thing he could see in the glass was his own face, in the reflection from his desk lamp.

All going to die.

I’m going to die.

“You’re going to die,” he said out loud. “Tonight.”

Shit. It didn’t even sound dramatic enough.

If it was anybody else but Annabelle… Well, if it was her, of course, Davette, he’d have to do it. And maybe…

But that wasn’t the goddamned point.

The goddamned point was that they were going to lose.

And the vampires were going to win, those slimy, greasy, bloodsucking fuckers were going to keep at it. That really riled him. And that notion that they had been sitting here, in his bar, while his waitresses and bartenders served them because they didn’t know. That was the deal. These miserable bastards would be treated as real live people by those who didn’t know. Like they really weren’t scum. Like they really belonged to the company of mankind, instead of… of what? What did they really deserve?

Sewage.

“I’m going to die,” he said again.

And then he turned back to his desk and wrote what he hoped was a legal document and be hoped he spelled her name right. Then he put it in an envelope, labeled it “Last Will and Testament,” and shoved it in the back of his checkbook. They’d find it.

Lousy Crow with his samurai bullshit. We’re already dead so nothing matters but Style! Crap! Is that his excuse for losing? Because the only thing worse than letting the vampires run free was losing to them first.

Shit!

He stepped away from his desk and looked around his rooms one last time, at some photographs on the wall, some souvenirs, some knickknacks. Not enough to leave behind after thirty-odd years.

Well… then… fuck it.

Fuck it!

At least he’d make damn sure he hurt them first.

And he stopped and looked again into the glass laughed.

Talk about your samurai bullshit.

Felix got lost in the vast complex of Parkland Hospital trying to find a new route from where he’d parked the motorhome. It took him ten minutes to finally come around a corner and see the sign for ICU/EMERGENCY. Below the sign, on a couch against the wall, were Cat and Davette. Adam stood against the wall beside them.

Davette was crying.

“What?” he called out, tripping toward them.

Davette lifted her face from her hands and it was all red and bright and tears streaked her cheeks.

“Oh, Felix!” she cried. “Annabelle died!”

And she leapt up and threw her arms around him and sobbed like a child, her fragile ribs heaving under his rough hands. He held her and patted her dumbly. Past her, Adam still leaned against the wall, his face grave and pale. And on the couch, Cat looked a whole lot worse, staring straight ahead, boring his eyes at nothing.

“I don’t get it,” Felix managed. “The doctor said—”

“She killed herself, Gunman,” rasped Cat in a voice from the grave.

“Sleeping pills,” added Adam in a quiet voice.

“But… why?”

Cat turned his head at last and looked at Felix and his eyes were scary.

“Because she knew we’d stay to protect her. And she… couldn’t… stand…”

And then Cat lost it, broke down completely. He collapsed, folding into his own miserable dry sobs, and Felix didn’t think he could stand it, Cherry Cat bawling, and even Davette, hearing that awful wrenching sound, pulled herself loose from Felix and returned to the couch and embraced him and the two of them shook and rocked together.

Felix sat down hard on the magazine-littered coffee table in front of the couch and fumbled around and found a cigarette and put it in his mouth and managed to light it and…

And he was too stunned, too shocked to do much else. Too blown to think. Numb and stupid and… Annabelle dead? Dead? Killed herself? He couldn’t bear their tears but there was no place to go and Adam didn’t look much better so he just sat there and stared at the hospital tiles under his feet.

I should feel relief, shouldn’t I? I mean, I’m not going to die tonight, after all. I should feel relief.

Why don’t I?

He started to take another puff and realized the cigarette had burned, unsmoked, down to the filter while he sat there numb and stupid and—

Waitaminute!

He caught Adam’s eye and mouthed: Where’s Jack?

But Adam only shook his head grimly.

What the hell…

Felix got up and went over to him and moved him down the wall away from the others.

“Give,” he said tersely.

Adam shrugged, looked miserable.

“Jack’s gone.”

“Where?”

“We don’t know. He… He just walked out when they told us.”

Felix glared at him. “Did he say anything?”

Now the young priest looked about to cry.

“He said, ‘I even managed to get her killed.’ Then be just walked out.”

Felix looked around. “Is he outside, then?”

Adam shook his head. “He took a cab. Felix?”

“Yeah?”

“He didn’t look good.”

“Like how?”

“Like… like crazy.”

Great. Felix looked at the other two. They were still crying.

Great.

Davette had finally gotten Cat to go to sleep in the main bedroom of the hotel suite. His sullen silence on the way from the hospital had been almost as unnerving as his weeping. She had fallen asleep watching him, curled up on the edge of the bed. Adam lay dozing on the lounge beside the bed. Felix sat in a chair by the great picture window that overlooked the Galleria Shopping Mall. The ashtray beside him was full.

And the sunset was lovely.

Shit.

He looked at his watch. Five hours now. No sign of Jack. No call. No word. No clue.

He looked over at the sleeping trio. He didn’t blame them. If anything, be envied them. He was tired, too. But he was more worried than anything else. He bad brought them to this hotel because it had been the place they were planning to go and because…

Because he didn’t know what else to do.

No one had heard from Crow. He had called the hospital half a dozen times. He had called the bishop’s — the late bishop’s — office and home and church. He had called the Team’s new house three’ times without answer. Each time he had imagined the phone ringing in Carl’s destroyed workshop.

He stood up slowly, thought about sneaking into the other room to try calling everyone again. But he knew better. Crow wasn’t at any of those places. Not now and not later.

I even managed to get her killed.

And the sleeping three looked mighty small without him there.

They look like I feel, he thought, and sat back down and added to the ashtray and stared at the blasted sunset.

“Where’s Jack?” came from behind him a moment later.

Felix turned and looked. It was Cat. He looked better. Still pale and drawn and.., hurting. But better. The sleep had done its deed.

“Where’s Jack?” he repeated, sitting in the chair beside Felix’s.

“I don’t know,” Felix replied.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s gone. He left from the hospital. No one’s seen him since.”

“But it’s almost nighttime!”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t understand!”

Felix looked at him. I don’t understand either, he felt like saying.

At least I hope I don’t.

But he didn’t say that. Instead, he gave Cat what little he knew from the beginning. When he told him what Adam had said Jack had said, he checked the other man’s face closely for a reaction.

But there was none. Just the same confusion. And concern.

Davette and the priest, he noticed, were up and about once more. Listening.

“I was hoping,” Felix said next, “that you might know something.”

Cat frowned. “No. I’ve been sorta…”

Felix nodded. “Yeah. But you know Jack better than anyone. In fact, you’re the only one here,” he added without thinking, “who’s known Jack for any…”

And then he stopped, shut up, as the realization hit him. As it hit Cat. As it hit the rest of them.

Two months ago, a full Team Crow. With soldiers and money and Carl and Annabelle and Cat and the monsters on the run.

And now… just Cat left. In this room anyway.

Felix held his breath watching Cat, but the smaller man came through the moment. It took a few deep breaths, a little concentration, but he stayed on top.

Good for you, Cherry, Felix thought.

But they had things to do.

“Where do you think he might go?” Felix continued. “After Annabelle. Would he go get drunk or…”

Cat was silent a moment. But when he spoke his voice was clear enough.

“He might. He… we all… loved her. He might just get drunk.”

“Where?”

“Huh?”

“You know his favorite joints. Where would he go?”

Cat nodded, thought a bit. Then he stood up and went over to the bed and sat down next to the phone and rummaged under the end table until he found a phone book. He opened it and started thumbing through it, his other hand resting on the phone. Then he stopped.

“The thing is, the only places I know where he’d go… Well, they might know about them, too. And he wouldn’t go there in case they came looking for him. The only places he’d go would be the places no one knows he goes. And that could be anywhere.”

He put down the phone book.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait for him to find us. He knew we were supposed to wait here until the plane leaves.”

The plane? Oh, yeah, Felix remembered. The plane for Rome.

But Jack Crow wasn’t thinking about that plane.

“Where,” Felix asked casually, “is his favorite spot?”

“Huh? Well, the Adolphus. He loves the place, the rooms, the service. He loves the bar. But he couldn’t go there. That’s the one place they’d be sure to look for him.”

“Give ’em a call,” suggested Felix, his voice still casual.

Cat frowned. “C’mon, Felix. He wouldn’t go there! They know about the Adolphus.”

Felix shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

Cat shook his head. “That would be asking for it and Jack—”

“You want me to call?” This time his voice was as strong as his mood.

Cat eyed him a moment. Then he picked up the phone and started dialing. Cat seemed to know this number. And he seemed to know the voice that answered.

“Terry? This is Cat. Mr. Catlin. Hi. I’m looking for Mr. Crow. I just thought… What? You’re kidding. Ring him for me, would you? But Terry. You know me. This is an emergency. I… Okay. Okay. Never mind.”

Cat hung up and stared at the others in amazement.

“He’s there. In the Governor’s Suite. He’s turned off his phone.”

Felix just sighed and turned away and puffed on his cigarette.

“I don’t get it!” Cat cried next. “Does he want to die?”

“I think,” said the Gunman quietly, “that’s the idea.”

Chapter 29

By the time they got to the Adolphus, Felix’s only remaining emotion was disgust.

Disgust with the whole damned deal. Disgust with the loss, with the waste. Carl Joplin and the bishop and the bishop’s people and poor, brave redheaded Kirk and Annabelle and…

And disgust with Jack Crow and, come to think of it, disgust with himself for being a part of it all.

But mostly disgust for the two cowboys in the back of the Blazer wearing their full chain mail and toting their cross-bows and in such a hurry to be killed rescuing a man who wanted to die.

Felix wore no chain mail because he had no intention whatsoever of going up there.

And he said so. Often.

“This is bullshit, Cat! And you know it. And Adam, you oughta know better than this. It’s suicide.”

Cat stubbornly shook his head. “Not if we can get him out of there before they show up.”

“What if they’re already there?”

Cat was silent.

“And what if he doesn’t want to come, Cat? Ever think of that?”

“He’ll come when be sees us.”

“Will he? Cherry, he wants this.”

“You don’t know that,” retorted Cat desperately.

“Then why is he there?” Cat was silent.

But Adam said, “We can’t let this happen to him.”

And Cat added, “How can you?”

Felix turned around in his seat and glared at him. “Because it’s none of my business, either. Can’t you see that?”

“Felix is right,” said Davette suddenly. And firmly. And that stopped the conversation.

For Davette had been silent throughout the argument and the drive, sitting quietly behind the wheel of the Blazer. Now, in her voice was the tone of someone who knew exactly what she was talking about.

“Felix is right,” she said again. “Jack is a victim, just as much as anyone. Just as much — as I was. And… it wears you down.”

She pulled to a stop at a red light and turned and faced the others.

“Sometimes you get so tired. Then all you want is for it to be over. Jack has had it differently from what happened to me. But he’s had it for three years.”

“It’s not the same,” insisted Cat.

Davette’s voice was warm but her eyes were very direct. “You don’t know that, Cat. Jack is tired.”

It was quiet for the next few moments. The light changed, the Blazer began moving again, and soon the Adolphus was in sight. Davette pulled to the curb across the street from the famous entrance and turned off the engine.

For a few seconds, no one moved. Then Cat took a deep breath and reached for the door.

“Don’t do it, Cat,” Felix told him.

Cat hesitated, then ignored him. Both he and the priest climbed out. Felix got out, too, and stood on the sidewalk glaring at the both of them.

This was bullshit!

“Have you ever thought how Jack’s gonna feel if you go down, too?”

Cat’s grin was thin. “At least he’ll be alive to hate me.”

“No, he won’t,” snapped Felix cruelly. “None of you will.”

“Felix,” said Adam slowly, “we just can’t let a Jack Crow die like this.”

“Oh! You can’t. Thanks, God.”

Adam just shook his head and the two of them started across the street.

Then Cat stopped and looked back.

“Tell me this, Felix. You’re so sure Jack wants to die. If he lives through tonight, you think he’d be happy? Or would he just do it again tomorrow?”

When Felix didn’t answer, Cat smiled again.

“He’s down, now. Annabelle… But he’ll come back if he can get the chance.”

Cat smiled again and waved.

“Don’t worry, Gunman. We’ll get a taxi.”

And then he and Adam tripped across the street to the hotel entrance.

Ouch.

Felix stood there a long while, watching them enter the lobby. Then he lit a cigarette. Then he looked at the Blazer, at Davette sitting behind the wheel. Then he got inside and closed the door and stared straight ahead.

Ouch.

Davette started the engine and they pulled away from the curb a few yards to the light and stopped again.

Ouch.

“Felix…?” she began.

But be shook his head.

Ouch. Ouch!

Because hadn’t there been a moment, lying there on the bishop’s rug, when he’d just wanted it over with? When he wished Jack would just give it up and let them get him? Stop prolonging the inevitable?

Wasn’t there?

Wasn’t there a moment like that? And wasn’t he glad Jack had kept it up?

Shit.

Shit!

“Pull over.”

“Felix! You can’t—”

“Pull over,” he repeated and his voice was hard.

“Felix! Please…” she urged. But she began pulling the Blazer to the curb.

“I know,” he said harshly. “I know, I know I know!”

And this time his disgust was all for himself.

He got out of the truck. An elderly couple, both black, were staring at a window display of garish, cheaply made leather shoes.

Is this the last store I’ll ever see?

He looked at Davette. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Did you know I love you?”

She smiled grimly, nodded.

He nodded back, shook his head, and sprinted across the street to the hotel.

The polished bronze doors opened smoothly, almost silently, onto the twenty-first floor and…

Ha! There in the thick, rich carpet — the impressions of chain-mailed boots! The Two Stooges were here!

If he had laughed — and he almost did — it would have been a wild, broken cackle.

Felix had never known such fear.

Such anger.

Such… disgust.

He knew his face would frighten a passing stranger.

He knew he was going to die.

He knew he was never going to see Her again and he knew he couldn’t have Her unless he went ahead.

He knew it was madness.

It was out of control.

Two ways into this prestigious hallway. The fire stairs at one end, the half-open oaken double door to the Governor’s Suite at the other. He glanced briefly toward the fire stairs, then strode boldly along the footprints in the carpet and pushed the suite’s door open all the way and then just stood there and waited for something to happen.

But nothing did.

Not going to be that easy, eh? Fine.

He stepped into the room.

Magnificent room. Antiques and imported carpets over polished hardwood floors and fifteen-foot ceilings and flowing diaphanous curtains pushed in from the steaming terrace breezes. The terrace ran the length of the L-shaped living room and there, at the far end of the huge room, in the dim light from the downtown high rises, were Cat and Adam, crossbows in their fists, crouched down next to the open french doors.

Felix almost laughed. He almost shouted out to them.

But he didn’t. Instead he looked to see what they were seeing.

It was easy. There was another set of french doors by the front entrance, right next to him, also blowing hot the diaphanous curtains, also pale against the lights from the towering downtown buildings, also open to the terrace where, less than thirty feet away, closer to Felix than Cat and Adam or the safety of the fire stairs sat Jack Crow.

On a stone bench.

Talking to a vampire.

Felix stepped closer and felt the disgust welling up, swelling up and through his eyes and out the top of his head. By God! but it was beautiful.

He had forgotten how beautiful they were.

It was young and thin and blond and tall, lazing confidently and casually against the four-foot walled railing, the lights from some glass tower delicately illuminating his stark yet smooth and precious features. White shirt and black pants and black leather boots. Not the same outfit as the little god in Cleburne. But close enough. The same grimy elegance.

The same shoddy, sexy, decadent, beautiful…

Fuck you, little god. Fuck you and all the rest of you.

And fuck you, too, Jack Crow, for talking to it.

Talking to it. Like it was human. Like it was only half bad. Like it was misunderstood or “two-sides-to-everything” and not a crushed, smeared, cockroached soul.

And then he saw the crossbow Jack had hidden.

It was down behind the bench on which he sat, propped up against some huge potted terrace tree, and Felix really did almost laugh this time, at the puny, pitiful, all-destructive self-deception of it all.

Felix read it all, now. Saw it all. The whole sad script.

What was Crow going to do? Just wait up here with arms flung open, yelling “Bite me!” into the night? Oh, no. Gotta at least pretend you’re going down nobly, don’t you, Warrior Jack? Gotta make believe this is a Something, right? A Something, a last ‘bold thrust’ instead of the seamy suicide it really is.

And he almost left right then. He almost left Jack Crow to his paltry, sickening, disgusting little Passion Play.

Ha!

But what about the Two Stooges? All crouched down and ready to rush up and save him and ensure that three, rather than just one, get swept to ugly, ugly hell. Can’t leave the Two Stooges, can I?.

Especially since I’m the goddamn third one?

Out of control.

He heard his heart and he could see his pulse, throbbing through the thumb wrapped death-grip tight around the Browning.

Madness.

But a lovely night, he thought. If a trifle warm.

Then he crossed his hands, with the Browning, behind his back and kicked the french doors open all the way and stepped out onto the terrace just as loudly as he knew how.

“Hey, you! Little god! Is it true your dick doesn’t work anymore?”

Silence. Then surprise from those piercing eyes, then understanding of what was said.

Anger flashing his way.

“Felix!” shouted Jack. “Felix, no! What are you doing?”

“It’s not just him!” popped Cat, stepping out onto the other end of the terrace.

“Cat!” yelled Jack, stricken.

“It’s all of us,” added Father Adam, joining Cat.

“No!” whispered Jack weakly. “No… no…”

“What is this?” flashed the monster. “Am I to be trapped here?”

And then he smiled that cocky, beautiful smile.

“Hey!” snapped Felix with his own smile. “Tell me about your dick.” And then, in a conspiratorial tone: “Can’t get it up, right?”

And the smile vanished and the evil sneer spread out to him.

“Puny little man… How I will enjoy your crushing, bleeding, death cries and your—”

“Sure, sure, sure,” replied Felix calmly. “But let’s face it. You can turn ’em on pretty good. But when it gets down to it…” And he held the fingers of his left hand out in front of his loins and dangled them limply. “When it gets down to it, it’s floppity-floppity. Right?”

Its burst of loathing, even from fifteen feet away, all but staggered Felix backward. The eyes went black, then red. The mouth slit itself wide as it stepped toward him.

“Welcome, puny mutt-man, to the… yolk…” and the fangs sprung out wide “… of the egg…”

And the laughter was a spear.

But Felix just laughed back and shot it right between those fucking fangs.

“Heeachaaaahhh!”

And it hissed and shook and the black gob spat out with the pain and surprise and… the hatred — And Felix shot it again, through the chest. And it staggered back, off-balance and reeling, and the backs of its legs bounced against the walled railing and…

It almost went over the edge!

And that gleaming thought, that wish, that insane hope… It stalled Felix for just an instant, just long enough for the monster to right itself and warp open its full monster’s face to the Gunman and Felix heard a crossbow go off… but so did the beast.

And it caught it. It did catch it in the air, goddammit!

Felix shot it again, in the shoulder of the hand that snatched the bolt.

The shoulder warped and shivered and there was more hissing and more black bile spat and Felix shot it again as it jerked toward him and the second crossbow — Adam’s? Jack’s? — tore through the air and crunched loudly through the center of its chest and out against the city lights.

Ungodly, unholy screams filled the night and the city and their heads and the monster’s frenzy was a blur of pain and horror and fury as it bounced and twitched and grabbed at the spit and there was another thong and another bolt pierced its chest from the side, splitting it neatly in the center, and the monster splattered black bile and rocked backward and bit the wall again and reeled, losing its balance and…

Yes! Yes! Go over, you prick! Fall! Fall!

And Felix fired again and again but the shots had so little effect next to the wooden stakes piercing it and there! From the side, motion rushing forward! Jack coming on!

And Felix wanted to shout “No!” but he could not, he could not. It was their only chance and he fired again and again, fired the Browning empty to keep it off balance and then Jack was there running full speed into it but at the last second…

At the last second it saw Jack.

And held up its hand.

And stopped him, all two hundred plus pounds at breakneck speed.

Stopped him. Caught him. Held him, ignoring its own pain and hissing:

“You foolish little…”

Before Father Adam appeared and slammed point-blank into the two of them…

The three went over the edge.

Just like that.

And quiet. So quiet, suddenly. Only the breeze and a far distant car horn and his own breath heaving and…

And Cat beside him, staring wide-mouthed at the wall.

Felix did manage to approach and look down and just glimpse, twenty-one stories down, three forms on the pavement, before.

“Nooooooooooooo…” burst slowly from Cat beside him and Felix felt his forward movement and he dropped his pistol as his right hand shot out and snatched a chain-mailed shoulder and he spun the smaller man toward him and away from the wall and sank his fist deep into his middle.

“Ooomph…” went Cat and sagged.

Felix didn’t wait. He followed with a right uppercut that caught Cherry full under the chin and decked him flat onto the terrace tiles.

Then he pounced on either side of his chest and jabbed a finger into Cat’s face and spat, though he knew the other man was too groggy to hear him: “No! You are not following anybody down!”

Then he rolled him up into a fireman’s carry and somehow bent down and picked up his empty gun and spun around for the door.

We’ve got to get out of here! We’ve got to get out of here now!

Because no fall, even twenty-one stories, was going to kill a vampire.

Back through the french doors and that huge room and those oaken double doors into the hail and mashing the elevator button. Should I wait? Should I take the stairs?

Or will it take the stairs? Just streak up them, floor after floor, to come get me?

But then the bell and the doors opened and the elevator was still there! Had it happened too fast for them to start down? Or some luck for a change?

Does it matter, stupid? Get moving!

The long ride down, floor after floor after fear of what might be waiting when they opened at the bottom.

But nothing. Just the lobby and startled people. Felix trotted down the steps toward the front door before pausing, suddenly, at the sights out on the street, people milling and cars pulled over and — Oh, shit! This is the side they fell on! It’s on this side!

He turned so abruptly toward the back entrance he almost dropped Cat.

The back entrance was at the end of a long tunnel-like corridor with nothing on either side of it but display windows and his own reflection and he thought about stopping before bursting out. Stopping and sneaking a peak. But he was too scared and too shaken and he might not have the nerve to move again, so when he came to the glass doors he simply bounced them open with his hip and he was out onto the sidewalk and there, parked across the street, was the Blazer.

“You stupid broad!” he cried delightedly and sprinted toward her.

Davette had the engine running and the side door open by the time he got there. The smile on her face was sweet and warm and simply everything.

Then she noticed it was just the two of them.

“What? But where…?” she began before he cut her off.

“This is it, dammit! Hit it! Let’s go!”

And she hesitated, but only for a second. Then she slammed the Blazer into gear and screeched away from the curb and ran the first light, turning right with the one-way street and then right again for the next one before Felix realized they were going back around to the front of the goddamned hotel!

“Uh… uh…” he tried to say. But it was too late. She had already made the turn and the front of the hotel Was there with its growing crowd out in the street.

“Hit it!” he yelled. “Faster! Faster! Don’t slow down!”

She barely glanced at him before obeying, slamming her foot down even harder on the gas and bursting past the pale, opened-mouthed faces and around the cars that had haphazardly stopped short, and then they were past them all.

But not before Felix had a chance to see it.

One body. One bloody crumpled form.

Adam.

But there had been three! He had seen three! What could it want with Jack’s dead body?

What?

Chapter 30

It would have been so simple if the plane for Rome had left the next day.

But there were papers and official documents and things to hassle over and the only thing that saved them was the Vatican being a separate nation, capable of issuing its own passports. Even with that, it was going to be three days of waiting.

Three days waiting and thinking and mourning.

And more thinking.

Cat thought fast. The first day, while they were sitting around the suite playing with their room service food, he suddenly looked up, shyly, at Felix and said, “Thanks, Felix.”

Which meant thanks for saving me? Thanks for coming up to help with Jack? Thanks for not letting me throw myself off the ledge? All of them?

Felix had looked at him and not really known. So he had just shrugged. Nothing more. Because he wasn’t sure, thinking back, if he had managed to do anything right.

So weird.

Every time he thought about what he’d done — going up to that bloody terrace — he got the willies. The hair and the goose pimples went up on his arms and he… got scared!

But then, every time he thought of that little god’s smug smile…

Then he got angry. And the desire to kick some ass was so strong!

But mostly, he was afraid. Deathly afraid.

Because they were still out there. Still wanting them. Still knowing who they were and still hunting them down. He knew this. He could feel this.

And so could the other two. He could see it in their eyes and in their posture and in the way they jumped whenever the elevator bell rang outside the suite’s door.

Felix finally had them moved to the end of the hail after that first night. That helped some. But that didn’t really solve it. They could still be found. Felix could still get to die. Or he could still get to kick ass.

You’re a mess, he thought to himself.

And then there was the matter of Davette. And the showers.

Cat hadn’t said a word all the way from the Adolphus to their hotel. When he had gotten to their suite he had gone straight to the little minibar there in the corner and tried to drink it dry and damn near succeeded. He was all but comatose within the hour and Davette had helped Felix pour him into one of the suite’s two bedrooms.

And after Felix had stood over him a few dark moments, watching him fit and start and twitch in his horrors.

“Sorry about your family, buddy,” Felix whispered at last.

Davette was waiting for him on the couch in the living room. She patted the seat beside her and said, “Tell me.”

Only then did he realize she didn’t actually know what had happened.

Good girl, he thought.

Then he thought, I could never have been that patient.

He sat down beside her on the couch, next to the fresh drink she had made for him, and told her.

It seemed to take such a long time, somehow. Because it was so sad and awful and because he didn’t know how much to tell her about his madness and he didn’t much want to think about it himself.

And because he was suddenly so goddamned tired. He never looked at her once as he spoke.

She moved closer to him as he told it. Not clinging. Just the warmth. He heard her weep toward the end. Felt it. He got up to get another drink for himself. Maybe he sat down a little closer when he returned.

When he had finished, it was so very quiet. Just the three of them left and just the two of them awake and alone and the night out there haunting. There was a large television in the room with its cabinet doors open and a remote control beside his hand and it was so very quiet — he reached down and flipped it on.

Some movie channel. Some silly comedy. Slapstick and pratfalls and nothing even remotely serious and ten minutes into it the main character did something inane like jamming his hand in a drawer or something…

And they laughed.

Not loud. Not hard. But enough.

He turned and looked at her for the first time and she was lovely and smiling back.

Then he hid again in the screen.

They laughed some more. Not because it was funny. Maybe because it wasn’t funny. It was stupid and mindless and so… easy. So silly and safe. And they laughed. And they drew closer and closer and when the film finally ended Felix had his arm around her shoulder and he turned to her and realized he stank and needed a bath.

She was already getting up.

“I’ve got to have a shower,” she told him, rather shyly. He grinned. “Me, too.”

“Oh!” she replied. “Do you want to go first?”

“No. I can use the other.”

“But Cat’s asleep.”

“Yeah. Well, I’ll wait.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

“Really?”

And he looked at her and they laughed again.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Take your time,” he called after her.

And meant it. Because he was scared again.

He stayed scared the whole time he listened to the water running and his heart beating because he knew…

He knew…

He knew he wasn’t going to be able to do this.

He didn’t know why. Not yet. Not clearly yet. He only knew it was so. And unfair.

“Okay!” she called out cheerily. “Your turn!”

He sipped the rest of his drink dry in one sip and stood up and puffed on his smoke and put that out. Then he walked into the bedroom.

Utterly, impossibly beautiful. Toweling her hair in the dim bedroom, the light from the bathroom soft from behind her and across her bare shoulders wrapped up snug and clean in a huge white towel and he didn’t blame her for this. From first sight it had been the two of them, rich and strong and needing each other. What she was doing was not wrong. Simply more painful.

He got past her somehow and into the bright bathroom lights. He even managed to close the door behind him without slamming it shut. He got his clothes off and into the huge sunken shower that smelled like her and drenched himself but none of it would go away.

Why can’t I have her? Why do I feel like I can’t?

Why do I feel like I can’t yet?

What the hell more do I have to do?

Sure, they’re still out there and, yeah, they’re still biting people. But that’s not my fault! Christ! I’ve fought and fought and everybody else is dead. They killed everybody else. Am I supposed to feel unworthy because they haven’t gotten to me yet? What kinda samurai bullshit is going on here? Is it a disease or something? The Jack Crow Samurai Bullshit Syndrome?

It’s not fair!

I don’t want to kick any more ass. I’m scared, dammit! It’s unfair to feel like I’m supposed to.

To feel like I must.

I don’t want to have that goddamned torch passed on to me. That torch kills people. It kills everyone.

“I don’t believe this shit!” he shouted out loud into the cascading water.

But it was true.

But maybe it was only true… now. Maybe it was just part of the grief and the like. Yeah! That was it! I’m just rundown and tired and my comrades are gone and I feel like I’m taking advantage of them now but…

But that will pass.

Right?

Right?

He waited over an hour to come out. To sneak out, on tiptoe, bathroom lights already out before he opened the door.

She was asleep. At least she was lying still on the shadowy bed and that was good enough for him. He sneaked past her into the living room and found an extra cover in a closet there and wrapped up in it on the couch and turned off the light — all without making a peep.

Tomorrow this will pass.

Right.

Sometime in the night the sound of someone sobbing woke him up. He rose up on the couch and started to go to her but it stopped. Was that Davette?

Was that me?

Is this ever going to end?

The next morning she was sweet and friendly and gracious as if nothing had happened and he knew damn well he had hurt her feelings but…

But he didn’t want to think about that now.

Cat came to a little later and he was shaken and ashen gray once more but he was back.

They talked about nothing while they ordered and waited for breakfast and then it came and they sat down together and ate it and it was somewhere in the middle of that meal that Cat had looked up at Felix and thanked him.

And Felix shrugged.

A few minutes later Cat spoke again: “So. What’s the next move?” he asked Felix.

And Davette had looked to him as well, as if it was the most natural thing in the world — for him to decide.

He almost punched Cat again.

He wanted to say, Don’t start looking to me, now, goddammit! I ain’t carrying anything on.

But he did not say this. He was calm. He played the game and gave them what they wanted. He told them they would stay here, in the suite, until tomorrow afternoon, when they would go to the bishop’s office, as planned, and pick up the documents and tickets for the nonstop to Rome that left the next day.

Calm. Reasonable. Leader-sounding, if that’s what they really, really, fucking wanted.

But, he added silently, don’t think this changes anything. This doesn’t change shit.

We are out of the vampire business.

So they stayed in the suite. All that day and all that night. Room service food and movie channels and alcohol. When it got late, Cat went to crash in his bedroom. A few minutes later Davette went to the other.

Felix took his drink and went to the window and looked out over north Dallas.

Odd to be able to do that. When he had been growing up, there was nothing this far north. No shopping malls, no freeways, no high-rise luxury hotels. But now he could almost see his house. He could almost see hers.

That started him remembering, for some reason. He had loved that time. The money, the lovely homes and people. The country club parties. The debutante balls. He had always wanted to be a part of that because he saw it as more than just upper-class frivolity. It was a celebration of men and women, generation after generation of them, who were raised to shape the world. Maybe they were a little smarter? Because their parents had been smart enough to build so much and they had kids as smart as them?

Or maybe not. Felix had known a lot of dumb rich kids.

But still, the expectation had been there. You were expected to accomplish something. Invent something or at least manufacture it and make payroll and support your employees and expand something. Expand everything.

But I didn’t. I didn’t do shit. And here I am, waving goodbye.

Shit.

Is that why Davette’s story had sunk so deep into him? Because it was about people ripping up the best of his past? The best of his memories?

Should I try to go in to see her now?

He had another drink. And another. He was drunk after the third and, well, the couch was right there.

And he didn’t want to think about it.

The bishop’s office staff at St. Lucius got very quiet when Felix walked in the next afternoon. There was another bishop there, filling in, who escorted Felix into the inner office and gave him the documents and tickets.

Then he asked what to do about the bodies.

Of Carl. Of the bishop. Of two of his aides. Everyone else on the bishop’s staff, it turned out, had run to the church during the attack, where they had been safe.

But what to do about the bodies?

Felix didn’t know enough to tell them. And he damn sure wasn’t going to go out to the Blazer and bring Cat in to explain.

“Call Rome,” he said.

“But what about your friend?” the bishop asked him. “I understand that his remains have already—”

“Call Rome,” Felix repeated, then left.

It was still only late afternoon when he drove them back to the hotel. And the sunshine was bright on the great glass building and maybe that’s what made it seem so like a prison.

Felix stopped the Blazer in front of the hotel entrance. The entrance to the connecting Galleria was less than one hundred yards away, with its shops and its people and… He realized he had cabin fever. Had it bad.

“Anybody want anything?” Felix asked them, suddenly.

Cat and Davette exchanged a smile.

“Sure,” he said.

“Let’s look,” she said.

And they all grinned and Felix let the hotel park the car and they went inside and through the lobby to the mall doors and by the time they got there they were almost trotting. The mall was full of people strolling up and down, children skipping and pointing, old couples sitting on benches with their sacks between their legs. The place was four stories high and four blocks long, with the stores stacked on either side of the Great Atrium, which ran the length of it all. Topping everything was a great curved multipaneled skylight.

Retail heaven.

They almost did some actual shopping. After a few moments Davette saw something in a window that she liked, a pair of brown shoes. She asked the men what they thought of them and Cat and Felix said they were pretty, why didn’t she buy them and she said she would.

But they just stood there, instead, looking into the window. Alter a few moments, they moved along down the mall toward the smell of food. Most of the restaurants were gathered in the center of the Great Atrium, on three stories overlooking a skating rink. There were steak houses and little bistros and Tex-Mex joints and Chinese food and two or three little bars.

They compromised on a bar that served food, finding a table that overlooked the skating rink.

And they sat down and had a drink and another drink and something to eat and watched the skaters and made comments about them. But they never talked about anything serious. Never. And they didn’t leave. And the sun slipped slowly away.

What are we trying to prove, Felix wondered, when he realized they were going to stay.

What are we trying to deny?

An hour and a half later, with the skylight black above them, they saw the vampire.

Or noticed him, rather, which was the part that got to Felix.

That and the goddamned unfairness of it all.

Because they had been looking at him for some time before they realized what it was, before Davette’s breath suddenly caught in her throat and the men looked at her, looked to where she was staring, at that same guy standing down there at that other bar…

And saw him. Really saw him for what he was.

It was a long, polished, curved wooden bar that skirted along the edge of the rink. Weary shoppers could pause, hop up on a stool, and grab a quick one without breaking stride. And then they might sit there a little longer, watching the skaters. And maybe have just one more drink before trying to find Uncle Stan’s birthday present. Maybe they would just stay until closing.

The vampire was at the far end of the bar to their left, standing there alone pretending to drink something clear on the rocks. A few feet to his right, sitting alone, was a young woman in her mid-twenties with long legs and auburn hair and a stack of shopping bags piled around her stool and no one to save her.

Because we’re the only ones who know, Felix thought bitterly. And we can’t do anything because it’s dark and…

And what? What?

The deception is what got to him. Just walking up and ordering something and spotting his prey and getting away with it. He could have sat down next to anyone — but us. Anyone could have sat down next to him.

Hell, I could go sit down next to him now!

And do what? Nothing. Die, maybe.

But I could do it. And he wouldn’t recognize me, either.

Felix didn’t know why that notion so intrigued him.

But then the hunt started and no one thought. They just watched.

It happened so fast. It happened so smoothly. Suddenly he was just there, closer to her. And they were talking. And then she was laughing and then she couldn’t take her eyes off him and Felix turned to see if Davette could watch this, knowing what she knew. But she stared just like the men.

And it Went on and on until Felix just couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Get the car,” he told them.

Cat looked at him. “What are you planning—”

“Just get the car. Bring it around to…” He looked around. “Bring it around to that entrance over there. What is that? The west side? And wait for me.”

“Felix,” Cat began again. “Tell us what you’re—”

“It won’t hurt to find out where he takes her,” was all he would say.

They left. Felix stayed. And watched.

When the new couple, master and slave, stood up from the bar, Felix checked his watch. Nine minutes. Nine lousy minutes between life and death. It was like watching a slow-motion traffic accident.

Felix paid the tab and trailed along behind them. It carried all half dozen of her shopping bags in one easy grip. The girl was on its other arm, smiling and looking hypnotized up to its face as they made their way to the exit.

They walked out the glass doors and to the edge of the sidewalk and waited there, talking, as if for a taxi. Felix meandered on around to one side toward the Blazer, parked several yards away.

He got in and told Cat, sitting behind the wheel, to pull away and around a line of parked cars before they got noticed. Cat obeyed. By the time he had steered them back around to where they could again see the couple, the limousine was there.

It was a long black Cadillac and it pulled to a smooth stop at the curb in front of the couple. From the driver’s door stepped a tall pale man wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. He stepped to the door closest to the couple and opened.

Davette gasped when the tall, handsome, silver-haired man stepped out.

“My God!” she whispered. “It’s him!”

“Who?” the men demanded.

“It’s him!” she repeated and turned to Felix. “The man who sent Ross to kill Jack!”

Felix hadn’t taken his eyes from the man. “Are you certain?” he asked her in a strange voice.

“I’m positive. It’s him. He’s the one. I saw him twice. I…

“What?” Cat asked.

She tilted her head, staring. “I don’t know exactly. It’s just that… Well, he looks so familiar. I mean, he looked familiar then. And he still does.”

Felix was still watching the silver-haired vampire as he got out of the limo, was graciously introduced to his procured victim, even more graciously — with many bows and flourishes — ushered everyone into the rear of the black car.

“Follow them,” Felix said.

“Felix!” said Cat excitedly, “if this is the guy, then he’s the one who’s been after us.”

“Well, Felix? Say something!”

“Just follow them, Cat,” the Gunman replied and his voice was too hard and too dry for further conversation.

They all went to far north Dallas, past the yuppie suburbs and into the sprawling countryside, with its sprawling golf course and estates, to a fortress.

It didn’t look like a fortress, not to an untrained eye. It simply looked like a glamorous, incredibly expensive country home. It just happened to have a seven-foot-tall rock wall around it and a black iron automatic gate and a gatekeeper’s booth. Hidden along the wall, where you could only see them if you looked for them, were electric wires, electric lights, and, Felix could only assume, penetration sensors.

A fortress.

The limo had already turned into the gate and Cat was slowing down as he passed the entrance when Felix barked at him: “Speed up! Speed up! Go past! Don’t let them notice this car!”

“I just wanted to see the name on the—”

Felix roared at him. “Move, goddamn you, Cat! Move the fucking car!”

Cat blinked, obeyed, hit the gas. They sped quickly past the entrance.

“Now,” said Felix a mile later, “take us to the hotel.” And his voice was calmer but his tone — his tone was still sharp ice. Cat and Davette exchanged a look but didn’t speak throughout the trip. Felix sat alone in the back seat. He stared out the side window. He didn’t move. But the pulse on the side of his neck throbbed rhythmically with the lights from passing traffic.

By the time they got back to the suite, Cat couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Felix, dammit! If you had just let me see who it was!”

Felix eyed him with a scary calm. “Really?”

“Yes! Really. Just let me slow down enough to read the mailbox. Just let me get the bastard’s name!”

Felix looked at him a moment, then carried his drink to a table next to the picture window that overlooked the lights of the city. He put the drink down without sipping it. And spoke.

“The bastard’s name is Simon Kennedy.”

“Of course!” Davette cried. “‘I know that name. I’ve heard that name.”

But Cat couldn’t take his eyes off the Gunman’s back.

“But you, Felix. You… you know him. Don’t you?”

Felix turned slowly toward them and his eyes were hard to look at and his grin was a death-mask’s grin.

“For fifteen years,” he hissed.

Chapter 31

Gunman Felix never did actually start raving as he spoke of Simon Kennedy.

What he did was worse.

It was low and slow and chilling, a bitter, vicious, grinding, dull roar of a voice, rich and fat with venom.

It was terrifying.

Because they could see the mounting rage, the virulent agonized fury, bubbling up and up.

But never out.

He paced as he spoke, back and forth, back and forth, his face a tight gray skull, his eyes always distant and inward. Always dark.

Gunman Felix remembered the very first time he had been introduced to Simon Kennedy, remembered his face and his smile and his handshake. Remembered seeing him dance, for chrissakes, at debutante parties and charity balls.

Gunman Felix remembered his laugh.

“Very big social figure. Very prestigious to have him at a party. Very big deal. Because he was so smooth, you know. Smooth and polished and cultured. Very big into culture is our monster. Patron of the arts, they called him — probably still do.

“And all those people and all those kids are looking up to this pig, told to look and act and think like him and be gracious and smooth when you meet him. Young guys told to stand up tall and the girls straightening their gowns and touching up their hair as he comes down the bloody receiving line because everybody loves him, you see. Everybody thinks he’s such a grand person!”

Gunman Felix turned and looked at them, at Cat and Davette, and his face was hard to meet.

“He just walks right up to them. Because they don’t know. Right up to them and smiles and shakes their hands and talks to them and they talk back — just like he was real. Because they don’t know!”

He walked away from them and spoke again, so low they could barely hear him.

“No one knows. But us.”

Gunman Felix was quiet for a while, pacing again back and forth, smoking furiously and inwardly boiling.

Cat and Davette exchanged a glance when they heard his teeth grind.

“Ha!” he shouted without any humor, and stopped abruptly.

He looked at them and his tone was reasonable and deeply wicked.

“Honey, when your aunt died and the medical examiner came over to take care of things for you — you ever met the guy before?”

Davette thought a moment. “I think so.”

Felix nodded. “Sure. At your level you meet everybody eventually. But did you know him? Did your aunt hang out with him?”

“Well… no. I don’t think so.”

“So he suddenly drops everything and comes to your aid. I mean, she had lots of old friends, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Of course. But—”

“But don’t you see! Your Aunt Victoria committed suicide. An autopsy is automatic, by law. That M.E. — what’s his name?”

“Dr. Harshaw.”

“Yeah. Harshaw. He gives her an autopsy — he’s got to. It’s the law with all suicides. And he sees the marks. He sees the bites. And he knows what’s what and… that’s how they found Ross! Don’t you see? Harshaw sees it’s a vampire and he tells Kennedy. That’s the only way a vampire can survive in the middle of the city. He owns the medical examiner. Owns him or one of his bitches does. Maybe he owns the poor guy’s wife… It doesn’t matter.

“The point is: he’s strong. Strong and powerful and he knows people, and the people he doesn’t know socially, he owns.

“That fucking house of his. That fort. No way to get to him there. Daytime, high noon — it doesn’t matter. Think you can get through that wall? Through that Fort Knox front gate? And, even if you did, are you prepared to kill half a dozen security guards who almost certainly haven’t got a clue as to what’s what? Then the staff, of course. They’ll try to stop you. Some of them know, too. And they’ll really put up a fight.

“And by then, just how many SWAT teams and police choppers and Texas Rangers do you think will be surrounding you — shooting at you on sight — for trying to pull some terrorist act on the home of so prominent a man?

“A pillar of the fucking community?

“Patron of the fucking arts.”

Gunman Felix sat down, abruptly, and turned to his watery drink and drank it dry and held out the glass for another. Cat took it from him and went to refill.

“Ha!” laughed Felix again… and that awful laugh made them jump…

“Ha! I still get solicitations from him. Or some charity board he’s on. You know?”

Davette jumped again at his look, nodded. “I remember him now.”

Gunman Felix nodded and smiled. “Yeah.”

Davette didn’t like his smile.

“He had some favorite charity goodie, didn’t he? Got something at the office in the mail along with a bunch of clippings.”

“Opera,” said Davette.

And he looked at her and his eyes went wide and his smile was too bright and tortured.

“Yes! Of course! Opera. Isn’t it all just so wonderful?”

Davette didn’t know what to say. Cat, standing there pale and staring, remembered the drink in his hand and handed it to the Gunman. Felix drank it dry in a single gulp.

“Yeah. Opera. Some big project about…”

And he stopped and looked at Davette and it hit her, too, and she looked back at him.

“The Opera House!” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied. “The Opera House.”

And he looked over at the newspaper Cat had left crumpled on the floor, open to the Entertainment Section because they had been thinking about going to an afternoon movie.

Gunman Felix stood up and strode over to it and picked it up and rifled quickly through it.

“Ha!” he cackled when he found what he wanted.

And he came back and he leaned down to where Davette was sitting on the floor and planted the open newspaper on the rug beside her and punched his index finger into it so hard it went through the newsprint.

They looked. It was an ad. For the much delayed, greatly heralded, grand opening of the Dallas Opera House. One week from today.

“He’ll be there,” whispered Gunman Felix and his voice was old dead wood. “He’ll be there. And they will rush up to him and shake his hand and congratulate him and love him.

“And in return, he’ll slash their throats and swell fat and thick on their blood.”

No one spoke for a few moments after that. Cat and Davette couldn’t speak, could only stare at the maniacal grin sitting before them, relishing and cherishing and worming the pain deeper into his own soul. He seemed to take such dreadful delight in the crushing irony of it all.

“Yes,” he said after a while and he was much much calmer.

Impossibly so.

“Yes,” he repeated. “He could just walk up to people and talk to them. But they could just walk up to him, too. Even somebody who knew what he was. He would not suspect. He would simply smile at them, like a big… fat… tick.

“He would be completely off his guard, wouldn’t he?”

“Felix!” gasped Cat. “You can’t mean…”

“Rock and roll, Cherry Cat. Isn’t that what you always say?”

“You can’t be serious!”

Gunman Felix just smiled and stared at the newspaper ad.

“Got to, Cat. Got to.”

Chapter 32

Oh! What a gala night! Oh, what an event! Everyone, simply Everyone, was there. What a pity it had to be in the summer, in this dreadful hot weather. But those workers had, just taken their time and those awful unions — everyone knew how they could be.

Yet it was done now. Finished and complete and shining and wasn’t it simply marvelous! All those slopes and weird shapes? What was that architect’s name? Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. The important thing is it’s all done now and what an event we are having tonight. Everyone was there.

Even the streets were dressed for the event. With banners and streamers and a band playing both before and after the show, as all those people would be strolling out. And, oh, the cameras and the street all blocked off and the chairperson of the Opera Committee arriving in that two-horse carriage with the mayor and his wife and…

Oh, the street entertainers! Look at them! Aren’t they cute? All those mimes and those jesters dressed in those cute, tight stripes with those hats with the bells on them. And even more fun were the period people, with those costumes like the opera itself, selling — what was that? Mead? Or some such thing? And meat pies. And turkey on a stick. And those two artisans, wearing that cute chain mail and selling those old weapons that were positively guaranteed to be authentic but shouldn’t they have at least painted over the plastic parts, ha ha?

Pity about the opera part of it all. It was pretty, of course — beautiful, some of those costumes. But it was rather dreadfully long, wasn’t it? Of course, operas are supposed to be long and one knows it’s Great Art and all the rest, but still one wonders — perhaps if it was just a teensy bit shorter? And if we could understand what they were singing? Perhaps they should just speak some of it? But then it wouldn’t be opera, would it?

Of course, it wouldn’t have to be subsidized then, either, but not to think of that now, because it was over and everyone, Everyone, had woken up from their little naps and… Oh! The afterparties! All those delicious afterparties! Because this was such an Important Occasion, such a Cultural Milestone! Like New Year’s Eve, wasn’t it? With all the limousines and there goes the mayor in his little buggy and wasn’t it so much nicer now that it was cooler and that hot sun had gone down? People didn’t look quite so… wilted, somehow. One should never look wilted in a formal gown — how tacky! And the men, how handsome in their tuxedos. Oh, they always complain and gripe, but secretly, everyone knows, they love to dress up. And they really are so handsome. Nothing like black tie to make a man look distinguished, even those men who have — how shall we say it? — aged both in years and size? Both up and out? Ha ha!

Like that handsome silver-haired fellow just now coming down the steps, the one alone going between the new brass pillars that hold up the awning, going toward that limousine with that tall chauffeur holding the door.

What was his name?

“Kennedy!” barked Gunman Felix, coming around from behind his “authentic crossbow” stand.

The vampire turned and smiled and the crossbow bolt as big as a baseball bat shot right through the gleaming expanse of his starched white tuxedo shirt and splattered clear drops out the back and the umbrella barbs popped open and held it fast

And for just a moment, only Felix, binding the cable to the thick brass pillar, was moving. Everyone else was frozen, too startled to gasp. Unbelieving. This wasn’t possible was it? Or part of the show? A trick? An assassination? Too surreal…

Even the monster stood as he had, staggered back a step, his arms flung wide by the impact, his redding eyes focused on the wooden stake piercing his blackened soul.

For just an instant…

Then the eyes went up and the mouth spread wide the fangs and, the howl began…

And Cat stepped in from the left and fired and his bolt plunged deep, crisscrossing the first, and as he scrambled to tie his cable to the other brass pillar, the monster… detonated…

The howling, the ungodly, unreal howling shot through the crowd and echoed off the street and the maniacal frenzy was impossibly violent and crazed. Oh, God! The howling, screeching, tearing sound…

And the people watching who had first thought: murder. Murder! Murder!!… now thought, What is this? What is that! It cannot be a man! It cannot be! Not that sound! An animal? What kind of an animal could…

Thrash and rip and screech and the hissing burst forth upon them and the first desperate evil wrenching-away shook the thick brass pillar and the second made it rock and creak and the awning above it sway and then the second cable was tied fast and the monster frenzied even wilder with the terror of being trapped and… and the anger.

… the blazing fury…

… at this young man who presumed to attack a god!…

And instead of pulling away, the monster burst forward toward Felix.

And into his balloons.

They weren’t water balloons that broke and splashed on his face and chest, that awful smell in its gleaming mouth.

They were gasoline. And they broke, one-two-three, across his front and soaked him and Cat already had the flare lit and he tossed it and it hit the rushing chest and bounced off, but not before…

The flames rushed up and out and around him, his clothes and hair and skin bursting with it, a flame that could not be that color, could not be that bright and cracklingloud and when the black glob finally spat forth, it was burning.

And nothing could have that evil, hell-wretched smell.

No thought of anger. No thought of vengeance. Not anymore. No more. The pain… the pain! And it howled and warped into madness and wrenched back and the pillars swayed and gave some and it wrenched some more, the screaming, the screaming, and the pillars started to buckle where they were bolted against the sidewalk.

NO! No! It can’t get free!

The Gunman squatted and aimed and fired at the right knee and missed and fired again and hit it. And then the left knee and the howling! The howling as it crumpled, crippled and imploding with the agony, still wrenching itself back and forth, back and forth, faster and faster, screaming and screaming and the pillars…

The pillars broke free and it fell backward, rolling, and lay there for a second as two more silver bullets rammed into its chest. But then it was up, a ball of scrambling flame backing away, thudding into the side of the limousine and then crawling like a crab across the top into the street and—

And Gunman Felix fired again and again and again and, yes, there was an effect. It jerked and swayed with each impact…

But there was no stopping it. It was into the middle of the street now, scrambling, scrabbling away, the ends of the crossbow bolts sparking on the asphalt and…

We can’t stop it! It’ll get away and the flames will go out and it’ll pull those stakes out.

Now! We’ve got to stop it now! Just for a few seconds! It couldn’t take much longer.

The Blazer, the one Davette had sworn to stay hidden in two blocks away, was doing twenty-five when it vaulted across the sidewalk, thirty when it bounced across the curb into the street, and an even thirty-six when its front bumper slammed dead-center into the warping flames.

The noise! The streak of fire as the vampire flew past them, the awful crash as it splintered against the front bumper of its own black limousine, the terrible keening wail as it lay, a frenzied flaming blur, against the curb.

Gunman Felix was standing over it when the burning hands tried to raise up, was staring down when the blazing tortured eyes focused on him, was smiling when they collapsed backward into the fire.

The swell of flame was twelve feet wide and hot and bright and impossibly loud.

Then the loud hissing, as though gas were escaping. Then sparks. So many sparks.

Then that loud pop thunderous and deep.

Then nothing. A tiny circle of blue-and-white flame flickering out around a small pile of ashes.

The people watching had no idea what they had just seen. But something inside was glad. Something inside was relieved. Something inside was grateful to the pair in the chain mail. Later they would forget. Or try. But now.

Supernatural.

“We did it!” shouted Cat, unbelieving himself. “We did it! Felix! We killed it! We killed a master! At night!”

Felix nodded, said, “Yeah.”

Then he turned to the tall, pasty-faced chauffeur and thumped two fingers hard into his chest.

“Spread the word.”

Last Interlude

It was only Will. Will and Hatred and Revenge. Over Pain.

Will and Hatred and Revenge were stronger, were they not?

I am stronger, am I not?

Did I not bear the cramped capsule across the seas, with the sputtering, plaything mortals seeking to caress me and join with me?

Could any other have done that?

Would any other dare?

Would any other know what I know about this Disease-Felix?

Will and Hatred and Revenge must be satisfied.

So up and over the ancient walls that could never be too high or too strong for his powerful claws, nor could the drop over the side be too high or any creature or mortal fool be able to sprint across these famous gardens with such breathtaking speed and grace.

Yes, the pain. The awful pain. The greater pressure of the pain, across his temples and into the bones of his face and skull as he drew nearer and nearer to this, the Lair of the Monster’s Beast on Earth.

Oh, the agony. Oh, the pressure as it grew. It stumbled once, with this pain, with this agony.

But Hatred and Revenge and Will!

For the Disease-Felix would not leave! It would not come out! It stayed and stayed, happy and breathing and warm in the center of the pain and—

And it thought it was safe! It cannot think it is safe! It cannot believe!

The walls of the building were as slick as the outer barricades but its claws, even with the pain, were no less sharp or strong. It could spring up these walls, up or down or sideways, until it found the terrace and found the window into its room.

Its room. Did he not know this room? Was this not his room when once he, too, was Pawn of the Monster’s Beast on Earth? Did he not..

Ohhh! The pain. Stronger here is the pain. So close to the center. So certain of its wretched might.

But there is still Will. There is still Hatred.

He would still swallow deep his Revenge.

Somewhere on the grounds below the alarms began to sound and the lights began to glow through the trees and there were the sounds of mortals running like fools and calling to one another.

But too late.

The ancient terrace door and all its locks and bolts and sneaky wires were too late. The door gave easily in his claws and, Yes! The pain was greater inside, much, much, greater. But he summoned his Will. He summoned his Hatred. And he stalked across the centuries-old room. Stumbling, yes. With pain, yes. The great pressure seared through him.

But then he was at the bedside and there! Before him! The form of the Disease-Felix so smug and safe in its sheets.

And he ripped at the sheets, agony though this movement was, and exposed the form underneath and cried, “Felix! Feeeelixxxx! I have come for you!”

But the face that turned to his own was an elderly one…

“No! Noooo!” it shrieked.

And the Old One said, its voice gentle and sad, “Jack… My son! My poor son.”

And the wrinkled hand, so softly caressing its cheek…

The flame exploded across his face and skull and down his spine before spreading across the rest of his body. His howl of pain was impossible to bear. The flame swirled around him and raised him up and consumed him, Consumed him, sent him rocketing about the walls and the ceilings and all those places his soul did touch could never ever be wiped completely clean…

And then the scream ceased. And the flame condensed and boiled in the center of the room.

Then it shot upward out of sight.

The man stared a long time at the spot on the ceiling where the flame had gone. It was only when he moved at last that he realized he was crying.

And noticed the young Gunman standing in the doorway, the forbidden pistol in his hand.

“How did you know?” he asked.

Felix’s face was grim as he reholstered the Browning.

“It’s what I would have done.”